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COPntlGIIT DEPOSIT. 



A Week on the Concord and 
Merrimack Rivers 

BY 

HENRY D. THOREAU 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

NATHAN H. DOLE 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



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Copyright, 1900, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



Where'er thou saiPst who sailed with me 
Though now thou dimbest loftier mounts, 
And fairer rivers dost ascend, 
Be thou my Muse, my Brother—. 



I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore, 
By a lonely isle, by a far Azore, 
There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek. 
On the barren sands of a desolate creek. 



I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind, 
New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find ; 
Many fair reaches and headlands appeared, 
And many dangers were there to be feared ; 
But when I remember where I have been, 
And the fair landscapes that I have seen. 
Thou seemest the only permanent shore. 
The cape never rounded, nor wandered o'er. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Most of us live as unconscious of the animated 
world about us as we are of the cloud of unseen wit- 
nesses by which we are said to be surrounded. We 
turn a deaf ear to all but the most obvious songs ; 
our eyes gaze into the haunts of the birds and we 
see only sparrows and robins. We go our way and 
let our humble brothers go theirs. What we know 
of " animated Nature " we take on faith from Gold- 
smith and those of his school. As Browning says : — 

" A fiower is just a flower : 
Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, many 

We have learned in the last hundred years to ap- 
preciate the picturesque. Search through the litera- 
ture of Greece and Rome and we shall find few 
references to the beauties of mountain and sea. The 
ancients had only a limited spectrum and even the 
nightingale did not inspire their flights of song. Chau- 
cer and Milton and Goldsmith went to Italy, but the 
sight of the Alps did not rouse one of them to break 
forth into such a hymn as Coleridge, with a little help 
from a German master, sung to the Dawn in the 
Valley of Chamounix. 

Brunetto Latini personifies Nature as a gracious 
woman of colossal stature gathering into her arms 



viii INTR OD UC TION. 

all the creatures that live, but in all his long poem 
there is not another gleam of picturesqueness. His 
greater pupil, Dante, introduced passages of radiant 
beauty into the Divine Co7nedy, but the test of their 
picturesqueness in our modern sense of the word 
would be to try to paint them. The Nature of Mil- 
ton was as formal as the closely trimmed hedges or 
the cropped trees which he must have seen on the 
Continent. Pope's famous grotto was a type of the 
Nature which he loved. This larger aspect of Nature 
is, as I have said, modern ; but the microscopic study 
of every phase of life in field, forest, and stream has 
its roots in classic literature. It is well worth one's 
while to take Theokritos or Vergil and see how the 
homely details of country life there depicted antici- 
pate the school of writers of which Thoreau is such 
a conspicuous example. Hear Theokritos : — 

" T^ere we reclined on deep beds of fragrant len- 
tisk, lowly strown, and rejoicing we lay in new-stript 
leaves of the vine. And high above our heads waved 
many a poplar, many an elm tree, while close at hand 
the sacred water from the nymphs' own cave welled 
forth with murmur musical. On shadowy boughs 
the burnt cicalas kept their chattering toil ; far off 
the little owls cried in the thick corn brake, the 
larks and finches were singing, the ringdove moaned, 
the yellow bees were flitting about the springs. All 
breathed the scent of the opulent summer, of the 
season of fruits ; pears at our feet and apples by our 
sides were rolling plentiful ; the tender branches with 
wild plums laden were earthward bowed, and the 



INTR OD UC TION. ix 

four-year-old pitch seal was loosened from the mouth 

of the wine-jars." 

And Vergil : — 

" Here among familiar rivers 

And these sacred founts, shalt thou take the shadowy coolness. 

On this side, a hedge along the neighbori7ig cross-road. 

Where Hyblcean bees ever feed on the flower of the willow. 

Often with gentle susurrus to fall asleep shall persuade thee. 

Yonder betieath the high rock, the pruner shall sing to the 
breezes ; 

Nor meanwhile shall thy heart's delight, the hoarse wood pig- 
eons. 

Nor the turtledove, cease to mourn from aerial elm trees." 

There are dozens of passages in Thoreau which sound 
as if they were a prose paraphrase of classic idyls 
— at least six such in the first twenty pages of the 
present book. 

The roots of a thing are not the flower ; and the 
modern development, and particularly the develop- 
ment of Nature-literature in prose in this century, is 
very interesting. Perhaps we may regard White of 
Selborne as the first who in modern times brought to 
the study of Nature carefully adjusted powers of obser- 
vation. But during the past half-century Nature has 
been most persistently wooed and won. There comes 
into literature something more than a mere detailed 
description and infinitesimal analysis: it is a deep, 
sympathetic appreciation of beauty. Says Emerson : — 

' ' Nature beats in perfect tune 
And romtds with rime her every rune. 
Whether she work in land or sea 
Or hide underground her alchemy. 



X INTR OD UCTION. 

" Thou canst not wave thy staff in air 
Or dip thy paddle in the lake. 
But it carves the bow of beauty there. 
And the ripples in rimes the oar for sake y 

Without a touch of Pantheism such cult of Nature 
would be impossible. The finding of something 
beyond Nature makes it worth while to study so 
minutely the infinite variety of leaf and flower and 
bird-note. It is better than the worship of " the great 
God Pan " which one finds in the poems of so many of 
the poets of the present day. If that filthy and dis- 
reputable old character should really come at their 
call, they, especially the woman poets, would find 
his hoofs and horns as unpleasant as they seemed to 
the Hamadryads of old. Bnt the affectation after all 
stands for something and covers a certain genuine 
feeling. It is sometimes a little morbid in young 
poets, but the young poets have a passionate delight in 
recondite phenomena whether they understand them 
or not, and there is a hearty welcome for the interpret- 
ers who have gone straight to Nature herself, have 
lived her life, and practised in her language. 

These interpreters have nearly all of them a strong 
flavor of wildness ; they are, if not barbarians, charac- 
terized by some of the better qualities of barbarism. 
Thoreau says, ^' There is in my nature, methinks, a 
singular yearning toward all wildness '' ; and fiirther 
on in the same Sunday on the Concord which you 
will shortly read, he boasts of his paganism : *• I am 
not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to 
the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my 



INTRODUCTION. xi 

country's God. ... In my Pantheon, Pan still 
reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his 
flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and 
his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter 
lambe ; the Great Pan is not dead, as was rumored. 
Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of an- 
cient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine." 

Of Thoreau, it has been said that he lived and 
died to transfuse external Nature into human words. 
His personality was acutely developed. Now indi- 
viduality is well worth cultivating, but not at the 
expense of symmetry. In this respect, Apollo is a 
god more worthy of worship than the horn-hoofed 
Pan with his rural pipes. A lopsided genius may 
do great things ; we forgive him for his lopsided- 
ness and put up with his idiosyncrasies. Socrates was 
not even picturesque, and did not clean his fingernails ; 
he would have done just as much good and had a far 
wider personal influence, and probably lived several 
years longer unmolested, and possibly made Xantippe 
a very diff"erent wife and woman, if he had not allowed 
his eccentricities to get such a hold upon him. 

In Thoreau also we have to distinguish between the 
man and the writer. His critics found it hard to do 
so. Many of them have been unduly severe upon 
him because they did not really understand him and 
never knew him. Robert Louis Stevenson says of 
him: — 

" Thoreau's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face, even 
in a bad woodcut, conveys some hint of the limitations 
of his mind and character. With his almost acid 



XU INTR OD UC TION. 

sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity 
in act, there went none of that large unconscious ge- 
niality of the world's heroes. He was not easy, not 
ample, not urbane, not even kind ; his enjoyment was 
hardly smiling, or the smile was not broad enough to 
be convincing ; he had no waste lands nor kitchen- 
midden in his nature, but was all improved and sharp- 
ened to a point." So he goes on till he comes to the 
conclusion — "Thoreau was a skulker! " 

Emerson, who was his townsman, and house-mate, 
judged him just as unfairly. James Russell Lowell 
ridiculed him, declaring — " The tub of Diogenes had a 
sounder bottom! " John Burroughs says of him, " He 
was a man devoid of compassion, devoid of sympathy, 
devoid of patriotism, as these words are usually under- 
stood — he was also destitute of pity and love (in 
the human sense) and of many other traits that are 
thought to be both human and divine." A recent 
history of American literature says of him, "Not- 
withstanding his life among large things and the 
breadth of his writing, his personal character was not 
large." The late Francis H. Underwood declared 
that his experiment as a recluse " was the experiment 
of a selfish misanthrope, the freak of a literary bar- 
barian." Almost all accounts of Thoreau assert that 
he was so full of love for the universe that he had no 
room for love for his fellow-men. 

And yet there is very good reason to believe that 
this disagreeable notion of Thoreau is quite unjust. 

In reading the works of those that lived long ago, we 
have a decided advantage over their contemporaries. 



INTRODUCTION. xiii 

We can dissociate their works from their lives. 
We forget the dissoluteness of Burns and Byron ; we 
care not if Shakespeare was a poacher. This fact is 
a strong proof that as a general thing too much atten- 
tion is paid to the personal element in the study of 
literature. Perhaps it is a little harder in the case 
of Thoreau because he boasts of being an egotist. 
He says in Walden : " In most books the / or first 
person is omitted ; in this it will be retained ; that in 
respect to egotism is the main difference. We do not 
remember that it is, after all, always the first person 
that is speaking. I should not talk so much about 
myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as 
well."" 

Thus he paints himself in his books, and out of these 
various pictures we can make a composite which will 
approximate to the truth. And yet we are far enough 
away from him to study his work on its own merits, 
and to apply our knowledge of his life only as far as 
it instructs or elucidates. 

He was of mixed lineage — French and Scotch. His 
great-grandparents were well-to-do citizens of St. 
Helier in the island of Jersey. A younger son came 
to New England in 1773, and married a Scotswoman, 
Jane Burns. Their son, John Thoreau, Jr., having 
failed in mercantile business and lost the property in- 
herited from his father, became a pencil-maker and 
acquired a competence and distinction. He lived in 
Concord, Massachusetts. His wife was Cynthia Dun- 
bar, daughter of a Keene (New Hampshire) gentle- 
man — a witty, intellectual woman, " fond of dress and 



XIV INTR OD UC TION. 

fond of gossip, a great talker.'' Once, when some one 
remarked a resemblance between Thoreau's style and 
Emerson's, she replied, " Yes, Mr. Emerson's style is 
like my son's." 

Henry David was the third child of these parents, 
and was born July 12, 181 7, in a house on the so- 
called Virginia Road near the Bedford Levels. As a 
child he was afraid of thunder-showers : yet when 
told, at the age of three, that, like the godly men of 
whom he read in his religious exercise books, he too 
would have to die, was not alarmed, but declared 
that he did not want to go to heaven because he could 
not carry his sled to heaven with him. He was a 
sturdily honest lad ; when charged with taking a knife 
he contented himself with saying, " I did not take 
it " ; and when the real culprit was found and he was 
asked why he did not sooner explain, he still repeated 
laconically, " I did not take it." The boys called 
him " The Judge." 

At sixteen he was sent to Harvard, having been 
prepared at the Concord Academy. During his vaca- 
tions he taught school. Through Emerson's kindly 
offices he received assistance from the college funds, 
but his dislike of routine kept him from winning dis- 
tinction. He refused to take his degree, on the ground 
that five dollars was too high a price to pay for it. 
The Rev. John Weiss, who was his room-mate, thus 
pictured him : — 

" He was cold and unimpressionable. The touch 
of his hand was moist and indifferent. . . . Revery 
hung always about him, and not so loosely as the odd 



INTRODUCTION. xv 

garments which the pious household care furnished. 
Thought had not yet awakened his countenance ; it 
was serene and ratlier dull, rather plodding. The 
lips were not yet firm, there was almost a look of 
smug satisfaction lurking round their corners. It is 
plain now that he was preparing to hold his future 
views with great setness and personal appreciation 
of their importance. The nose was prominent, but 
its curve fell forward without firmness on the upper 
lip, and we remember him as looking very much like 
some Egyptian sculptures of faces — large-featured, 
but brooding, immobile, fixed in a mystic egoism." 

One of his friends remarked of him : " I love 
Henry, but I cannot like him. ... As for taking 
his arm, I should as soon think of taking the arm of 
an elm tree." He made few friends. Neither his 
classmates nor his teachers regarded him as likely to 
attain distinction. In a letter written a few years 
after graduation he says that what he learned in col- 
lege was chiefly to express himself. Speaking of his 
college course in navigation, he exclaimed, " Why, if 
I had taken one turn down the harbor, I should have 
known more about it." 

Even then he had resolved to " read no book, take 
no walk, undertake no enterprise, but such as he 
could endure to give an account of to himself and 
live thus deliberately for the most part." This giv- 
ing an account to himself of his life gave rise to his 
diaries, which with Walden and the present book are 
his literary legacy to posterity. After graduation he 
taught school for a year or two ; he was engaged with 



XVI INTR OD UC riON. 

his brother in keeping the Concord Academy. Like 
Alcott he determined not to flog his pupils, but such 
leniency did not suit the committee, — they insisted 
that Mr. Thoreau should use the ferule. He put this 
stringency into immediate practice, and feruled six 
pupils after school one day, — one of them was the 
maid-servant in his own house. What the effect on 
their domestic affairs was is not on record, but he 
shortly afterwards resigned his position. He also 
withdrew from Dr. Ripley's congregation ; in this 
respect he was the true type of the anarchist. He 
refused to pay the church tax on the ground that he 
did not see why the schoolmaster should support the 
priest any more than the priest should support the 
schoolmaster; he avoided the penalty by signing a 
statement that he was not a member of the church. 
He resolved to reduce his necessities to the lowest 
terms ; his wants were few, his means were slender. 
He had a natural aptitude for all kinds of mechanical 
work. For a time he devoted himself to the ancestral 
work of making lead-pencils, and succeeded in pro- 
ducing a better kind than was in the market. He 
obtained certificates from dealers and artists that his 
work was equal to that of the best London makers. 
There he stopped : " I shall never make another 
pencil," said he; "why should I? I would not do 
again what I have done once." Yet the exigencies 
of life compelled him to break that rash vow; he 
had to do something to earn his daily bread. He 
preferred the outdoor occupation of surveying; he 
delighted in reckoning measures and distances, the 



INTR on UC TION. xvii 

size of trees, the depths and surfaces of ponds and 
rivers ; so it was natural for him to take up the art of 
mensuration for his neighbors : his accuracy and skill 
became proverbial, he had all the work he needed. 
He himself put it in his quaint characteristic way, 
" To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for able- 
bodied seamen, when I was a boy sauntering in my 
native port, and as soon as I came of age I embarked." 
He recapitulates his favorite enterprises: "To 
anticipate not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but 
if possible Nature herself. How many mornings. 
Summer and Winter, before yet any neighbor was 
stirring about his business, have I been about mine. 
No doubt many of my townspeople have met me 
returning from this enterprise — farmers starting for 
Boston in the twilight, or wood-choppers going to 
their work. It is true I never assisted the sun mate- 
rially in his rising, but doubt not it was of the last 
importance only to be present at it. . . . So many 
Autumn and Winter days spent outside the town, 
trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and 
carry it express. I well-nigh sunk all my capital in 
it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running 
in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the 
political parties, depend upon it, it would have ap- 
peared in the gazette with the earliest intelligence. 
At other times watching from the observatory of some 
cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival, or waiting 
at evening on the hill-top for the sky to fall, that I 
might catch something, though I never caught much, 
and that, manna-wise, would resolve again in the 



X Vlli INTR OD UC TION. 

sun. For a long time I was a reporter to a journal 
of no great circulation, whose editor has never yet 
seen fit to print the bulk of my communications, and 
as is too common with writers I got only my labors 
for my pains. However, in this case my pains were 
their own reward." 

This "journal," for which he was the reporter, was 
his diary, which he kept after the manner of Emer- 
son, jotting down in it briefly or voluminously his 
observations and comments, and from which he drew 
as from a reservoir when he wished to write an essay 
or a book. His journals comprised thirty large vol- 
umes, and extend from 1837 till 1862. His literary 
executor, the late H. G. O. Blake, made up from 
these journals a perfect calendar of the year, giving 
minute observations on the changing seasons and 
all the graces thereof. 

" Nothing," says Thoreau, " can shock a brave man 
but dulness." He was never dull to himself. He had 
his duties to perform, and this minute chronicling 
of his observations was no small part of them. " For 
many years," he says, " I was self-appointed inspector 
of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faith- 
fully ; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest 
paths, and all across-lot routes, keeping them open 
and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, 
where the public heel had testified to their utility. 
... I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand 
cherry, and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black 
ash, the white grape, and the yellow violet, which 
might have else perished in dry seasons. . . , In 



INTR OD UC TION. xix 

short," he concludes, " I went on thus for a long time, 
I may say it without boasting, faithfully minding my 
business, till it became more and more evident that 
my townsmen would not after all admit me into the 
list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure 
with a moderate allowance." 

He expressed the same idea in his rugged, in- 
artistic rhymes: — 

"Great God, I ask Thee for no meaner pelf 
Than that 1 7?iay not disappoint myself, 
That in my action I may soar as high 
As I cannot discertt with this clear eye. 

"And next in value, which Thy kindness lends. 
That I may greatly disappoint my friends : 
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be 
They may not dream how Thou 'st disfinguisht rne." 

They did not dream it until long after he was dead, 
when to their surprise this man, whom some of them 
at least thought to be an idler, was found to be more 
and more the glory of the town. 

Thoreau was rewarded by Nature as few men have 
been rewarded in their fealty. He had amazingly 
quick senses and almost miraculous power of insight ; 
he could make his way through the darkest * woods 
at darkest night, where other men would have been 
lost at high noon. His keenness of scent was like 
a dog's. He needed no watch or almanac: the time 
of day he could tell by his eye ; the time of the year 
he could tell to a day by the curious clock of the 
changing flowers. He could measure distances and 



XX INTR OD UCTION. 

gauge depths without Gunter's line or plummet. He 
could infallibly grasp a dozen lead-pencils out of a 
mixed heap. He could measure bulk by silent com- 
putation. 

Moreover, Mother Nature taught her other children 
— the birds and animals — to have no fear of their 
human brother. He was trained in the school of 
Hiawatha. Squirrels would leap down from forest 
trees to his shoulder, and nestle in his pocket. He 
would visit the festive woodchuck in her holes ; 
she regarded it as no insult if he reached in his 
arm and pulled her out by the tail. More than once, 
when he was out on the Concord River, he was seen 
to put his hand down among the lily-pads and lift 
out a glittering fish ; he knew where they nested, 
and they loved to take their little foretaste of im- 
mortality from his gentle hand. He knew the haunts 
of all the wild creatures of the woods and fields. 
Everything came ready to his wish. Once, when out 
walking, a friend asked him where Indian arrow- 
heads could be found. 

" Everywhere," was his reply, and, stooping down, 
picked one up. 

When he sprained his ankle in Tuckerman's 
Ravine he found, all ready for application, the leaves 
of the Arnica 7nollis. " It was a pleasure to walk with 
him," said Emerson. " He knew the country like 
a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of 
his own. He knew every track in the snow or on 
the ground, and what creature had taken this path 
before him. . . . Under his arm he carried an old 



INTR OD UC TION, XXI 

music-book in which to press plants ; in his pocket, 
his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, micro- 
scopes, jack-knife, and twine. He wore a straw hat, 
stout shoes, strong gray trowsers to brave scrub 
oaks and smilax and to climb a tree for a hawk or 
squirrel's nest. He waded into a pool for the water 
plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part 
of his equipment." 

He was sometimes as brusque as a hedgehog. He 
would not throw away his walks on uncongenial per- 
sons, and he did not hesitate to express himself frankly, 
like the weather. Some one sent him an invitation : 
" Such are my engagements to myself that I dare not 
promise," was his reply. 

In the autumn of 1839 ^^ ^^^ ^^-^ brother made an 
excursion down the sluggish Concord, to the Merri- 
mac, and up the Merrimac to its source in the White 
Mountains — two days on the one and four days on 
the other. Almost every incident, almost every phe- 
nomenon, was chronicled and made to form the intro- 
duction to an essay. Now he tells scientifically of the 
habits of the genera of the finny tribes inhabiting the 
stream ; the sight of a church leads him to a soliloquy 
on rituals ; transcendental reveries are interrupted by 
rugged and unrhythmical and carelessly constructed 
jingles of verse. Such a style can be only superficially 
compared to Emerson's. Listen to Emerson : — 

" Whenever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, 
whenever day and night meet in twilight, whenever 
the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, 
wherever are forms with transparent boundaries. 



XXU INTR OD UC TION. 

wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is 
danger and awe and love, there is beauty, plenteous 
as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldst walk 
the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condi- 
tion inopportune or ignoble." 

There will be found in Thoreau thoughts not unlike 
that, but where in Emerson a bird is a bird, and a 
beast a beast, Thoreau tickets the bird with its scien- 
tific name and relates its habits and distinguishes it 
from all other birds. Emerson is vaguely general ; 
Thoreau accurate and particular. In that respect they 
are a world apart, and the resemblance between them 
is only accidental and superficial : only alike are they 
in their attempts at poetic efflatus, and in those Emer- 
son, in spite of his faulty rhythms, is vastly superior 
to Thoreau, just as Thoreau, in all that concerns Na- 
ture, is far more entertaining than Emerson because he 
is the reporter for her. Both of them quote Hafiz and 
the Bagvhat Gita and all poets with transcendental bias . 

The boat in which the Thoreau brothers made their 
famous inland voyage afterwards became Hawthorne's, 
and is mentioned in The Mosses from an Old 
Majise, and the fruit of the excursion was Thoreau's 
first volume. He got it ready for the press while liv- 
ing in his hut by Walden Pond. Parts of it had 
already appeared in The Dial, but when he was asked 
to offer a memoir of his observations to the Natural 
History Society, he exclaimed : " Why should I ? 
To detach the description from its connection in my 
mind would make it no longer true or valuable to me, 
and they do not wish what belongs with it." 



INTRODUCTION. XXlll 

The manuscript went from publisher to publisher, 
and he finally borrowed the money necessary to bring 
it out. It was issued in the summer of 1849, by James 
Munroe and Company. Though it received some 
complimentary notices, it did not pay its expenses, and 
Thoreau had to earn money by surveying in order to 
make good the loss. Four years after it was published 
Thoreau was asked to remove the unsold copies from 
the cellar of the publishing house. Seventy-five had 
been given away ; 215 had been sold, and the rest were 
sent to Thoreau by express. He confided to his diary, 
October 28, 1853, that "he had a library of nearly 
900 volumes, over 700 of which he had written 
himself." 

It did not affect his spirits ; he took the public in- 
difference philosophically ; he himself saw the good that 
was in it — its outdoor, or, as he calls it, " hypaethral," 
character. 

The world, which stones its living prophets and 
lets its poets beg their bread, has grown aware 
of its charm. Now everything from his pen is treas- 
ured, as the legacy of a prophet and a poet. He did 
not live to see his growing popularity. In 1841 he 
went to live with Emerson — Apollo serving Admetus. 
In 1844 he borrowed an axe of Alcott and built his 
famous little hut by Walden pond, and underwent 
the experiences detailed in the book that bears that 
name — the only other that was published during his 
lifetime. That same year he refused to pay his poll- 
tax, and was lodged in jail. 

"Henry, why are you here?" asked Emerson, 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

" Why are you not here ? " was the Yankee answer 
of the young anarchist. 

In 1846 he made his excursion to the Maine woods 
and explored the region around Mt. Ktaadn. He 
also made an excursion to Cape Cod, and the account 
of that has become classic. He was interested in the 
abolition movement, and it was whispered that the 
Walden hut was a station of the Underground Rail- 
way. When John Brown was tried and executed, 
Thoreau called his townspeople together and gave 
them a ringing address. His cry for liberty placed 
him in the vanguard of the liberals. At the outbreak 
of the War of the Rebellion his health had begun to 
fail. In 1 861 he went to Minnesota, but the climate 
there did not work the hoped-for benefit. After a 
long illness, borne with patience, he died on May 6, 
1862. 

No one can read the Concord and Merrimack 
Rivers without becoming fond of Thoreau ; the 
mixture of humor, of sound common sense, of wide 
information, of broad reading, of deep thought, of 
liberal theology, and above all of genuine love of 
Nature, all couched in a singularly clear and pellucid 
style — not faultless, but simple and definite — makes 
it a perpetual delight, not necessarily for consecutive 
reading, but for literary browsing. One may pick it 
up anywhere and find it full of suggestion and charm. 
It has become one of the classics of out-of-door 
literature. 

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE. 



CONCORD RIVER. 



' Beneath low hills, in the broad interval 
Through which at will our Indian rivulet 
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, 
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, 
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees, 
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell." 

Emerson. 



The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though 
probably as old as the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin 
to have a place in civilized history, until the fame of 
its grassy meadows and its fish attracted settlers out 
of England in 1635, when it received the other but 
kindred name of Concord from the first plantation 
on its banks, which appears to have been commenced 
in a spirit of peace and harmony. It will be Grass- 
ground River as long as grass grows and water runs 
here ; it will be Concord River only while men lead 
peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct race it 
was grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and 
it is still perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, 
who own the Great Meadows, and get the hay from 
year to year. " One branch of it," according to the 
Historian of Concord, for I love to quote so good 
authority, "rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and 
another from a pond and a large cedar swamp in West- 
borough," and flowing between Hopkinton and South- 
borough, through Framingham, and between Sudbury 



2 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and Wayland, where it is sometimes called Sudbury 
river, it enters Concord at the south part of the town, 
and after receiving the North or Assabeth river, which 
has its source a little further to the north and west, 
goes out at the north-east angle, and flowing between 
Bedford and Carlisle, and through Billerica, empties 
into the Merrimack at Lowell. In Concord it is, in 
summer, from four to fifteen feet deep, and from one 
hundred to three hundred feet wide, but in the spring 
freshets, when it overflows its banks, it is in some 
places nearly a mile wide. Between Sudbury and 
Wayland the meadows acquire their greatest breadth, 
and when covered with water, they form a handsome 
chain of shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by numer- 
ous gulls and ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge, 
between these towns, is the largest expanse, and when 
the wind blows freshly in a raw March day, heaving 
up the surface into dark and sober billows or regular 
swells, skirted as it is in the distance with alder swamps 
and smoke-like maples, it looks like a smaller Lake 
Huron, and is very pleasant and exciting for a lands- 
man to row or sail over. The farm-houses along the 
Sudbury shore, which rises gently to a considerable 
height, command fine water prospects at this season. 
The shore is more flat on the Wayland side, and this 
town is the greatest loser by the flood. Its farmers 
tell me that thousands of acres are flooded now, since 
the dams have been erected, where they remember to 
have seen the white honeysuckle or clover growing 
once, and they could go dry with shoes only in sum- 
mer. Now there is nothing but blue-joint and sedge 
and cut-grass there, standing in water all the year 
round. For a long time, they made the most of the 
driest season to get their hay, working sometimes 



CONCORD RIVER. 3 

till nine o'clock at night, sedulously paring with their 
scythes in the twilight round the hummocks left by 
the ice ; but now it is not worth the getting, when 
they can come at it, and they look sadly round to 
their wood-lots and upland as a last resource. 

It is worth the while to make a voyage up this 
stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, only to 
see how much country there is in the rear of us ; 
great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses, 
and barns, and hay-stacks, you never saw before, and 
men everywhere, Sudbury, that is Soiithboroiigh men, 
and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound 
Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, 
Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves 
are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, 
the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes 
waving; ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the 
surf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now 
going off with a clatter and a whistling, like riggers 
straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale 
with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with 
all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, 
to reconnoitre you before they leave these parts ; 
gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats swimming for dear 
life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that 
you know of; their labored homes rising here and 
there like hay-stacks ; and countless mice and moles 
and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore ; 
cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on 
the beach, their little red skiffs beating about among the 
alders ; — such healthy natural tumult as proves the 
last day is not yet at hand. And there stand all 
around the alders, and birches, and oaks, and maples 
full of glee and sap, holding in their buds until the 



4 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

waters subside. You shall perhaps run aground on. 
Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year's 
pipegrass above water, to show where the danger is, 
and get as good a freezing there as anywhere on the 
North-west Coast. I never voyaged so far in all my 
life. You shall see men you never heard of before, 
whose names you don't know, going away down through 
the meadows with long ducking guns, with water-tight 
boots, wading through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, 
wintry, distant shores, with guns at half cock, and they 
shall see teal, blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes, 
whistlers, black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild 
and noble sights before night, such as they who sit 
in parlors never dream of. You shall see rude and 
sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their 
castles, or teaming up their summer's wood, or chop- 
ping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare 
adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chest- 
nut is of meat ; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, 
but have been out every day of their lives ; greater 
men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakspeare, only 
they never got time to say so ; they never took to 
the way of writing. Look at their fields, and imag- 
ine what they might write, if ever they should put 
pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the 
face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and 
scratching, and harrowing, and plowing, and subsoil- 
ing, in and in, and out and out, and over and over, 
again and again, erasing what they had already writ- 
ten for want of parchment. 

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the 
work of to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, 
and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are 
in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, 



CONCORD RIVER. 5 

perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which 
never die. 

The respectable folks, — 

Where dwell they ? 

They whisper in the oaks, 

And they sigh in the hay ; 

Summer and winter, night and day, 

Out on the meadow, there dwell they. 

They never die, 

Nor snivel, nor cry, 

Nor ask our pity 

With a wet eye. 

A sound estate they ever mend, 

To every asker readily lend ; 

To the ocean wealth. 

To the meadow health, 

To Time his length. 

To the rocks strength, 

To the stars light, 

To the weary night, 

To the busy day, 

To the idle play ; 

And so their good cheer never ends, 

For all are their debtors, and all their friends. 

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of 
its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some 
have referred to its influence the proverbial modera- 
tion of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the 
Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been pro- 
posed, that the town should adopt for its coat of arms 
a field verdant, with the Concord circhng nine times 
round. I have read that a descent of an eighth of an 
inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our 
river has, probably, very near the smallest allowance. 
The story is current, at any rate, though I believe that 
strict history will not bear it out, that the only bridge 



6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

ever carried away on the main branch, within the limits 
of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But 
wherever it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and 
swifter, and asserts its title to be called a river. Com- 
pared with the other tributaries of the Merrimack, it 
appears to have been properly named Musketaquid, 
or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part, 
it creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scat- 
tered oaks,- where the cranberry is found in abundance, 
covering the ground like a moss-bed. A row of 
sunken dwarf willows borders the stream on one or 
both sides, while at a greater distance the meadow is 
skirted with maples, alders, and other fluviatile trees, 
overrun with the grape vine, which bears fruit in its 
season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still 
further from the stream, on the edge of the firm land, 
are seen the gray and white dwellings of the inhabit- 
ants. According to the valuation of 1831, there were 
in Concord two thousand one hundred and eleven 
acres, or about one-seventh of the whole territory, in 
meadow ; this standing next in the list after pasturage 
and unimproved lands, and, judging from the returns 
of previous years, the meadow is not reclaimed so fast 
as the woods are cleared. 

The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals 
thus unobserved through the town, without a murmur 
or a pulse-beat, its general course from south-west to 
north-east, and its length about fifty miles; a huge 
volume of matter, ceaselessly rolling through the 
plains and valleys of the substantial earth, with the 
moccasined tread of an Indian warrior, making haste 
from the high places of the earth to its ancient reser- 
voir. The murmurs of many a famous river on the 
other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to 



CONCORD RIVER. 7 

more distant dwellers on its banks ; many a poet's 
stream floating the helms and shields of heroes on its 
bosom. The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere 
dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by 
the ever-flowing springs of fame ; — 

" And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere 
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea ;" — 

and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our 
muddy but much abused Concord River with the most 
famous in history. 

" Sure there are poets which did never dream 
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream 
Of Helicon ; we therefore may suppose 
Those made not poets, but the poets those." 

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those 
journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the 
Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind 
of personal importance in the annals of the world. 
The heavens are not yet drained over their sources, 
but the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual 
tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the 
Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his reve- 
nue at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been 
the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first 
travellers. They are the constant lure, when they 
flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, 
and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks 
will at length accompany their currents to the low- 
lands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the 
interior of continents. They are the natural high- 
ways of all nations, not only levelling the ground, and 
removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, 
quenching his thirst, and bearing him on their bos- 



8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

oms, but conducting him through the most interesting 
scenery, the most populous portions of the globe, 
and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain 
their greatest perfection. 

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, 
watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all 
progress, following the same law with the system, with 
time, and all that is made ; the weeds at the bottom 
gently bending down the stream, shaken by the watery 
wind, still planted where their seeds had sunk, but ere 
long to die and go down likewise ; the shining peb- 
bles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the 
chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of 
trees, that floated past, fulfilling their fate, were ob- 
jects of singular interest to me, and at last I resolved 
to launch myself on its bosom, and float whither it 
would bear me. 



SATURDAY. 

" Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try 
These rural delicates." 

Invitation to the Soul. Quarles, 

At length, on Saturday, the last day of August, 
1839, we two, brothers, and natives of Concord, 
weighed anchor in this river port ; for Concord, too, 
lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for 
the bodies as well as the souls of men ; one shore at 
least exempted from all duties but such as an honest 
man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling rain 
had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay 
our voyage, but at length the leaves and grass were 
dried, and it came out a mild afternoon, as serene and 
fresh as if nature were maturing some greater scheme 
of her own. After this long dripping and oozing from 
every pore, she began to respire again more healthily 
than ever. So with a vigorous shove we launched 
our boat from the bank, while the flags and bulrushes 
curtseyed a God-speed, and dropped silently down 
the stream. 

Our boat, which had cost us a week's labor in the 
spring, was in form like a fisherman's dory, fifteen 
feet long by three and a half in breadth at the widest 
part, painted green below, with a border of blue, with 
reference to the two elements in which it was to spend 
its existence. It had been loaded the evening before 
9 



10 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes 
and melons from a patch which we had cultivated, 
and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels in 
order to be rolled around falls, as well as with two 
sets of oars, and several slender poles for shoving in 
shallow places, and also two masts, one of which 
served for a tent-pole at night ; for a buffalo skin was 
to be our bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our roof. 
It was strongly built but heavy, and hardly of better 
model than usual. If rightly made, a boat would be a 
sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, 
related by one half its structure to some swift and 
shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged 
and graceful bird. The fish shows where there should 
be the greatest breadth of beam and depth in the hold ; 
its fins direct where to set the oars, and the tail gives 
some hint for the form and position of the rudder. 
The bird shows how to rig and trim the sails, and 
what form to give to the prow that it may balance the 
boat, and divide the air and water best. These hints 
we had but partially obeyed. But the eyes, though 
they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any 
model, however fashionable, which does not answer 
all the requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a 
ship but the wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely 
serve the purpose of a ship, so our boat being of wood 
gladly availed itself of the old law that the heavier 
shall float the lighter, and though a dull water fowl, 
proved a sufficient buoy for our purpose. 

" Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough 
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plow." 

Some village friends stood upon a promontory lower 
down the stream to wave us a last farewell ; but we, 



SA TURD A Y. 1 1 

having already performed these shore rites with ex- 
cusable reserve, as befits those who are embarked 
on unusual enterprises, who behold but speak not, 
silently glided past the firm lands of Concord, both 
peopled cape and lonely summer meadow, with steady 
sweeps. And yet we did unbend so far as to let 
our guns speak for us, when at length we had swept 
out of sight, and thus left the woods to ring again 
with their echoes ; and it may be many russet-clad 
children lurking in those broad meadows, with the 
bittern and the woodcock and the rail, though wholly 
concealed by brakes and hardback and meadow-sweet, 
heard our salute that afternoon. 

We were soon floating past the first regular battle 
ground of the Revolution, resting on our oars between 
the still visible abutments of that " North Bridge," 
over which in April, 1775, rolled the first faint tide 
of that war, which ceased not, till, as we read on the 
stone on our right, it "gave peace to these United 
States." As a Concord poet has sung, — 

" By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood. 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

" The foe long since in silence slept ; 
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps." 

Our reflections had already acquired a historical 
remoteness from the scenes we had left, and we our- 
selves essayed to sing. 

Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din 
That wakes the ignoble town, 



12 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Not thus did braver spirits win 
A patriot's renown. 

There is one field beside this stream, 

Wherein no foot does fall, 
But yet it beareth in my dream 

A richer crop than all. 

Let me believe a dream so dear, 

Some heart beat high that day, 
Above the petty Province here, 

And Britain far away ; 

Some hero of the ancient mould, 

Some arm of knightly worth, 
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold. 

Honored this spot of earth ; 

Who sought the prize his heart described, 

And did not ask release. 
Whose free born valor was not bribed 

By prospect of a peace. 

The men who stood on yonder height 

That day are long since gone ; 
Not the same hand directs the fight 

And monumental stone. 

Ye were the Grecian cities then, 

The Romes of modern birth, 
Where the New England husbandmen 

Have shown a Roman worth. 

In vain I search a foreign land, 

To find our Bunker Hill, 
And Lexington and Concord stand 

By no Laconian rill. 

With such thoughts we swept gently by this now 
peaceful pasture ground, on waves of Concord, in 
which was long since drowned the din of war. 



SATURDAY. 1 3 

But since we sailed 
Some things have failed, 
And many a dream 
Gone down the stream. 

Here then an aged shepherd dwelt, 
Who to his flock his substance dealt, 
And ruled them with a vigorous crook. 
By precept of the sacred Book ; 
But he the pierless bridge passed o'er, 
And solitary left the shore. 

Anon a youthful pastor came, 
Whose crook was not unknown to fame, 
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance. 
Spread o'er the country's wide expanse, 
And fed with " Mosses from the Manse." 
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale, 
And here the shepherd told his tale. 

That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills, 
and we had floated round the neighboring bend, and 
under the new North Bridge between Ponkawtasset 
and the Poplar Hill, into the Great Meadows, which, 
like a broad moccasin print, have levelled a fertile and 
juicy place in nature. 

On Ponkawtasset, since, with such delay, 
Down this still stream we took our meadowy way, 
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray 
Doth faintly shine on Concord's twilight day. 

Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high, 
Shining more brightly as the day goes by, 
Most travellers cannot at first descry, 
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky. 

And know celestial lights, do plainly see. 
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three; 
For lore that 's deep must deeply studied be, 
As from deep wells men read star-poetry. 



14 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight, 
But hke the sun they shine forever bright ; 
Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight 
Put out its eyes that it may see their hght. 

Who would neglect the least celestial sound. 
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground, 
If he could know it one day would be found 
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound. 
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round? 

Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we 
seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our 
dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one 
awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts. We 
glided noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driv- 
ing a pickerel from the covert of the pads, or a bream 
from her nest, and the smaller bittern now and then 
sailed away on sluggish wings from some recess in 
the shore, or the larger lifted itself out of the long 
grass at our approach, and carried its precious legs 
away to deposit them in a place of safety. The 
tortoises also rapidly dropped into the water, as our 
boat ruffled the surface amid the willows, breaking 
the reflections of the trees. The banks had passed 
the height of their beauty, and some of the brighter 
flowers showed by their faded tints that the season 
was verging towards the afternoon of the year ; but 
this sombre tinge enhanced their sincerity, and in 
the still unabated heats they seemed like a mossy 
brink of some cool well. The narrow-leaved willow 
lay along the surface of the water in masses of light 
green foliage, interspersed with the large white balls 
of the button-bush. The rose-colored polygonum 
raised its head proudly above the water on either 
hand, and, flowering at this season and in these locali- 



SATURDAY. 1 5 

ties, in the midst of dense fields of the white species, 
which skirted the sides of the stream, its little streak 
of red looked very rare and precious. The pure white 
blossoms of the arrow-head stood in the shallower 
parts, and a few cardinals on the margin still proudly 
surveyed themselves reflected in the water, though 
the latter, as well as the pickerel-weed, was now nearly 
out of blossom. The snake-head, ckelone glabra, grew 
close to the shore, while a kind of coreopsis, turning 
its brazen face to the sun, full and rank, and a tall dull 
red flower, eiipatorhun purpiirejun, or trumpet weed, 
formed the rear rank of the fluvial array. The bright 
blue flowers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled 
here and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers 
which Proserpine had dropped, and still further in 
the fields, or higher on the bank, were seen the Vir- 
ginian rhexia, and drooping neottia or ladies'-tresses ; 
while from the more distant waysides, which we occa- 
sionally passed, and banks where the sun had lodged, 
was reflected a dull yellow beam from the ranks of 
tansy, now in its prime. In short, nature seemed to 
have adorned herself for our departure with a pro- 
fusion of fringes and curls, mingled with the bright 
tints of flowers, reflected in the water. But we missed 
the white water-lily, which is the queen of river flowers, 
its reign being over for this season. He makes his 
voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water clock who 
delays so long. Many of this species inhabit our 
Concord water. I have passed down the river before 
sunrise on a summer morning between fields of lilies 
still shut in sleep ; and when at length the flakes of 
sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the 
water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash 
open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding 



1 6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence 
of the sun's rays. 

As we were floating through the last of these famil- 
iar meadows, we observed the large and conspicuous 
flowers of the hibiscus, covering the dwarf willows, 
and mingled with the leaves of the grape, and wished 
that we could inform one of our friends behind of the 
locality of this somewhat rare and inaccessible flower 
before it was too late to pluck it ; but we were just 
gliding out of sight of the village spire before it oc- 
curred to us that the farmer in the adjacent meadow 
would go to church on the morrow, and would carry 
this news for us ; and so by the Monday, while we 
should be floating on the Merrimack, our friend would 
be reaching to pluck this blossom on the bank of the 
Concord. 

After a pause at Ball's Hill, the St. Ann's of Con- 
cord voyageurs, not to say any prayer for the success 
of our voyage, but to gather the few berries which 
were still left on the hills, hanging by very slender 
threads, we weighed anchor again, and were soon out 
of sight of our native village. The land seemed to 
grow fairer as we withdrew from it. Far away to the 
south-west lay the quiet village, left alone under its 
elms and button-woods in mid afternoon ; and the 
hills, notwithstanding their blue, ethereal faces, seemed 
to cast a saddened eye on their old playfellows ; but, 
turning short to the north, we bade adieu to their 
familiar outlines, and addressed ourselves to new 
scenes and adventures. Nought was familiar but the 
heavens, from under whose roof the voyageur never 
passes ; but with their countenance, and the acquaint- 
ance we had with river and wood, we trusted to fare 
well under any circumstances. 



SATURDAY, 1 7 

From this point, the river runs perfectly straight 
for a mile or more to Carlisle Bridge, which consfsts 
of twenty wooden piers, and when we looked back 
over it, its surface was reduced to a line's breadth, 
and appeared like a cobweb gleaming in the sun! 
Here and there might be seen a pole sticking up, to 
mark the place where some fisherman had enjoyed 
unusual luck, and in return had consecrated his rod 
to the deities who preside over these shallows. It 
was full twice as broad as before, deep and tranquil, 
with a muddy bottom, and bordered with willows' 
beyond which spread broad lagoons covered with 
pads, bulrushes, and flags. 

Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore 
fishing with a long birch pole, its silvery bark left on, 
and a dog at his side, rowing so near as to agitate his 
cork with our oars, and drive away luck for a sea- 
son ; and when we had rowed a mile as straight as 
an arrow, with our faces turned towards him, and the 
bubbles in our wake still visible on the tranquil sur- 
face, there stood the fisher still with his dog, like 
statues under the other side of the heavens, the only 
objects to relieve the eye in the extended meadow ; 
and there would he stand abiding his luck, till he 
took his way home through the fields at evening with 
his fish. Thus, by one bait or another. Nature allures 
inhabitants into all her recesses. This man was the 
last of our townsmen whom we saw, and we silently 
through him bade adieu to our friends. 

The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and 
races of men are always existing in epitome in every 
neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth 
have become the inheritance of other men. This 



1 8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I 
myself have lived. Perchance he is not confounded 
by many knowledges, and has not sought out many 
inventions, but how to take many fishes before the 
sun sets, with his slender birchen pole and flaxen line, 
that is invention enough for him. It is good even to 
be a fisherman in summer and in winter. Some men 
are judges these August days, sitting on benches, even 
till the court rises ; they sit judging there honorably, 
between the seasons and between meals, leading a 
civil politic life, arbitrating in the case of Spaulding 
versus Cummings, it may be, from highest noon till 
the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman, 
meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the 
same summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases between 
muckworm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water- 
lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his life many rods 
from the dry land, within a pole's length of where the 
larger fishes swim. Human life is to him very much 
like a river, 

— " renning aie downward to the sea." 

This was his observation. His honor made a great 
discovery in bailments. 

I can just remember an old brown-coated man who 
was the Walton of this stream, who had come over 
from Newcastle, England, with his son, the latter a 
stout and hearty man who had lifted an anchor in his 
day. A straight old man he was who took his way 
in silence through the meadows, having passed the 
period of communication with his fellows ; his old 
experienced coat hanging long and straight and brown 
as the yellow pine bark, glittering with so much smoth- 
ered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no work of 



SATURDAY, 1 9 

art but naturalized at length. I often discovered him 
unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows 
when he moved, fishing in some old country method, 
— for youth and age then went a-fishing together, — 
full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance about his 
own Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to 
be seen in serene afternoons haunting the river, and 
almost rustling with the sedge ; so many sunny hours 
in an old man's life, entrapping silly fish, almost grown 
to be the sun's familiar ; what need had he of hat or 
raiment any, having served out his time, and seen 
through such thin disguises? I have seen how his 
coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and 
yet I thought his luck was not in proportion to his 
years ; and I have seen when, with slow steps and 
weighed down with aged thoughts, he disappeared 
with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts 
of the village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody 
else remembers him now, for he soon after died, and 
migrated to new Tyne streams. His fishing was not 
a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort 
of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, 
just as the aged read their bibles. 

Whether we live by the sea-side, or by the lakes 
and rivers, or on the prairie, it concerns us to attend 
to the nature of fishes, since they are not phenomena 
confined to certain localities only, but forms and 
phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The 
countless shoals which annually coast the shores of 
Europe and America, are not so interesting to the 
student of nature, as the more fertile law itself, which 
deposits their spawn on the tops of mountains, and 
on the interior plains ; the fish principle in nature, 
from which it results that they may be found in water 



20 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

in so many places, in greater or less numbers. The 
natural historian is not a fisherman, who prays for 
cloudy days and good luck merely, but as fishing 
has been styled, " a contemplative man's recreation," 
introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the 
fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new gen- 
era or species, but in new contemplations still, and 
science is only a more contemplative man's recreation. 
The seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere dissem- 
inated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters 
float them, or the deep earth holds them ; wherever a 
pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this viva- 
cious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not 
yet out. The Chinese are bribed to carry their ova 
from province to province in jars or in hollow reeds, 
or the water-birds to transport them to the mountain 
tarns and interior lakes. There are fishes wherever 
there is a fluid medium, and even in clouds and in 
melted metals we detect their semblance. Think 
how in winter you can sink a line down straight in a 
pasture through snow and through ice, and pull up a 
bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or golden 
fish ! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make one 
family, from the largest to the smallest. The least 
minnow, that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks 
like a huge sea-fish cast up on the shore. In the 
waters of this town there are about a dozen distinct 
species, though the inexperienced would expect many 



It enhances our sense of the grand security and 
serenity of nature, to observe the still undisturbed 
economy and content of the fishes of this century, 
their happiness a regular fruit of the summer. The 



SATURDAY. 21 

fresh-water Sun Fish, Bream, or RufF, Pomoiis vtd- 
garis, as it were, without ancestry, without posterity, 
still represents the Fresh Water Sun Fish in nature. 
It is the most common of all, and seen on every ur- 
chin's string ; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests 
are visible all along the shore, hollowed in the sand, 
over which it is steadily poised through the summer 
hours on waving fin. Sometimes there are twenty or 
thirty nests in the space of a few rods, two feet wide by 
half a foot in depth, and made with no little labor, the 
weeds being removed, and the sand shoved up on the 
sides, like a bowl. Here it may be seen early in sum- 
mer assiduously brooding, and driving away minnows 
and larger fishes, even its own species, which would 
disturb its ova, pursuing them a few feet, and circling 
round swiftly to its nest again : the minnows, like 
young sharks, instantly entering the empty nests, 
meanwhile, and swallowing the spawn, which is at- 
tached to the weeds and to the bottom, on the sunny 
side. The spawn is exposed to so many dangers, 
that a very small proportion can ever become fishes, 
for beside being the constant prey of birds and fishes, 
a great many nests are made so near the shore, in 
shallow water, that they are left dry in a few days, as 
the river goes down. These and the lamprey's are 
the only fishes' nests that I have observed, though the 
ova of some species may be seen floating on the sur- 
face. The breams are so careful of their charge that 
you may stand close by in the water and examine them 
at your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an 
hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without 
frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers 
harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in 
anger when my hand approached their ova, and have 



22 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

even taken them gently out of the water with my 
hand; though this cannot be accomphshed by a sud- 
den movement, however dexterous, for instant warn- 
ing is conveyed to them through their denser element, 
but only by letting the fingers gradually close about 
them as they are poised over the palm, and with the 
utmost gentleness raising them slowly to the surface. 
Though stationary, they keep up a constant sculling 
or waving motion with their fins, which is exceedingly 
graceful, and expressive of their humble happiness ; 
for unlike ours, the element in which they live is a 
stream which must be constantly resisted. From 
time to time they nibble the weeds at the bottom or 
overhanging their nests, or dart after a fly or a worm. 
The dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of a 
keel, with the anal, serves to keep the fish upright, for 
in shallow water, where this is not covered, they fall 
on their sides. As you stand thus stooping over the 
bream in its nest, the edges of the dorsal and caudal 
fins have a singular dusty golden reflection, and its 
eyes, which stand out from the head, are transparent 
and colorless. Seen in its native element, it is a very 
beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, and 
looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint. It is a 
perfect jewel of the river, the green, red, coppery, and 
golden reflections of its mottled sides being the con- 
centration of such rays as struggle through the float- 
ing pads and flowers to the sandy bottom, and in 
harmony with the sunlit brown and yellow pebbles. 
Behind its watery shield it dwells far from many acci- 
dents inevitable to human life. 

There is also another species of bream found in our 
river, without the red spot on the operculum, which, 
according to M. Agassiz, is undescribed. 



SATURDAY. 23 

The Common Perch, Perca fiavescens, which name 
describes well the gleaming, golden reflections of its 
scales as it is drawn out of the water, its red o-iUs 
standing out in vain in the thin element, is one of^'the 
handsomest and most regularl}' formed of our fishes, 
and at such a moment as this reminds us of the fish 
in the picture, which wished to be restored to its 
native element until it had grown larger ; and indeed 
most of this species that are caught are not half grown. 
In the ponds there is a light-colored and slender kind, 
which swim in shoals of many hundreds in the sunny 
water, in company with the shiner, averaging not 
more than six or seven inches in length, while only a 
fevv larger specimens are found in the deepest water, 
which prey upon their weaker brethren. I have often 
attracted these small perch to the shore at evening, 
by rippling the water with my fingers, and they may 
sometimes be caught while attempting to pass inside 
your hands. It is a tough and heedless fish, biting 
from impulse, without nibbling, and from impulse 
refraining to bite, and sculling indifferently past. It 
rather prefers the clear water and sandy bottoms, 
though here it has not much choice. It is a true fish,' 
such as the angler loves to put into his basket or hang 
at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons 
along the banks of the stream. So many unques- 
tionable fishes he counts, and so many shiners, which 
he counts and then throws away. 

The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or what- 
ever else it is called, Leitciscus pulchellus, white and 
red, always an unexpected prize, which, however, any 
angler is glad to hook for its rarity. A name that 
reminds us of many an unsuccessful ramble by swift 
streams, when the wind rose to disappoint the fisher. 



24 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

It is commonly a silvery soft-scaled fish, of graceful, 
scholarlike, and classical look, like many a picture in 
an English book. It loves a swift current and a sandy 
bottom, and bites inadvertently, yet not without appe- 
tite for the bait. The minnows are used as bait for 
pickerel in the winter. The red chivin, according to 
some, is still the same fish, only older, or with its tints 
deepened as they think by the darker water it inhab- 
its, as the red clouds swim in the twilight atmosphere. 
He who has not hooked the red chivin is not yet a 
complete angler. Other fishes, methinks, are slightly 
amphibious, but this is a denizen of the water wholly. 
The cork goes dancing down the swift rushing stream, 
amid the weeds and sands, when suddenly, by a coin- 
cidence never to be remembered, emerges this fabulous 
inhabitant of another element, a thing heard of but 
not seen, as if it were the instant creation of an 
eddy, a true product of the running stream. And this 
bright cupreous dolphin was spawned and has passed 
its life beneath the level of your feet in your native 
fields. Fishes, too, as well as birds and clouds, derive 
their armor from the mine. I have heard of mack- 
erel visiting the copper banks at a particular season ; 
this fish, perchance, has its habitat in the Coppermine 
river. I have caught white chivin of great size in the 
Aboljacknagesic, where it empties into the Penobscot, 
at the base of Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones there. 
The latter variety seems not to have been sufficiently 
observed. 

The Dace, Leiiciscics aj-gejiteiis, is a slight silvery 
minnow, found generally in the middle of the stream, 
where the current is most rapid, and frequently con- 
founded with the last named. 

The Shiner, Lencisacs crysoleucas^ is a soft-scaled 



SATURDAY. 25 

and tender fish, the victim of its stronger neighbors, 
found in all places, deep and shallow, clear and tur- 
bid ; generally the first nibbler at the bait, but, with 
its small mouth and nibbling propensities, not easily 
caught. It is a gold or silver bit that passes current 
in the river, its limber tail dimpling the surface in 
sport or flight. I have seen the fry when frightened 
by something thrown into the water, leap out by doz- 
ens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves 
upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant 
of the river, with body armor of gold or silver span- 
gles, slipping, gliding its life through with a quirk of 
the tail, half in the water, half in the air, upward and 
ever upward with flitting fin to more crystalline tides, 
yet still abreast of us dwellers on the bank. It is 
almost dissolved by the summer heats. A slighter and 
lighter colored shiner is found in one of our ponds. 

The Pickerel, Esox retiadatiis, the swiftest, wariest, 
and most ravenous of fishes, is very common in the 
shaflow and weedy lagoons along the sides of the 
stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking 
under the shadow of a pad at noon, with still, circum- 
spect, voracious eye, motionless as a jewel set in 
water, or moving slowly along to take up its position, 
darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or frog 
or insect as comes within its range, and swallowing 
it at a gulp. I have caught one which had swallowed 
a brother pickerel half as large as itself, with the tail 
still visible in its mouth, while the head was already 
digested in its stomach. Sometimes a striped snake, 
bound to greener meadows across the stream, ends its 
undulatory progress in the same receptacle. They 
are so greedy and impetuous that they are frequently 
caught by being entangled in the line the moment it 



26 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

is cast. Fishermen also distinguish the brook pick- 
erel, a shorter and thicker fish than the former. 

The Horned Pout, Pimelodus iiebiilosus, sometimes 
called Minister, from the peculiar squeaking noise it 
makes when drawn out of the water, is a dull and 
blundering fellow, and like the eel vespertinal in his 
habits, and fond of the mud. It bites deliberately as 
if about its business. They are taken at night with a 
mass of worms strung on a thread, which catches in 
their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, at 
one pull. They are extremely tenacious of life, open- 
ing and shutting their mouths for half an hour after 
their heads have been cut off. A bloodthirsty and 
bullying race of rangers, inhabiting the fertile river 
bottoms, with ever a lance in rest, and ready to do 
battle with their nearest neighbor. I have observed 
them in summer, when every other one had a long 
and bloody scar upon his back, where the skin was 
gone, the mark, perhaps, of some fierce encounter. 
Sometimes the fry, not an inch long, are seen darken- 
ing the shore with their myriads. 

The Suckers, Catostomi Bostonienses and Uiberai- 
lati, Common and Horned, perhaps on an average 
the largest of our fishes, may be seen in shoals of a 
hundred or more, stemming the current in the sun, on 
their mysterious migrations, and sometimes sucking 
in the bait which the fisherman suffers to float toward 
them. The former, which sometimes grow to a large 
size, are frequently caught by the hand in the brooks, 
or, like the red chivin, are jerked out by a hook fas- 
tened firmly to the end of a stick, and placed under 
their jaws. They are hardly known to the mere 
angler, however, not often biting at his baits, though 
the spearer carries home many a mess in the .spring. 



SATURDAY. 2 J 

To our village eyes, these shoals have a foreign and 
imposing aspect, realizing the fertility of the seas. 

The Common Eel, too, MitrcEiia Bostome?isis, the 
only species known in the State, a slimy, squirming 
creature, informed of mud, still squirming in the pan, 
is speared and hooked up with various success. 
Methinks it too occurs in picture, left after the deluge, 
in many a meadow high and dry. 

In the shallow parts of the river, where the current 
is rapid, and the bottom pebbly, you may sometimes 
see the curious circular nests of the Lamprey Eel, 
Pctrojnyson Americanus, the American Stone-Sucker, 
as large as a cart wheel, a foot or two in height, and 
sometimes rising half a foot above the surface of the 
water. They collect these stones, of the size of a 
hen's egg, with their mouths, as their name implies, 
and are said to fashion them into circles with their 
tails. They ascend falls by clinging to the stones, 
which may sometimes be raised, by lifting the fish 
by the tail. As they are not seen on their way down 
the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never 
return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and 
stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic 
feature in the scenery of the river bottoms, worthy 
to be remembered with Shakspeare's description of 
the sea-floor. They are rarely seen in our waters at 
present, on account of the dams, though they are 
taken in great quantities at the mouth of the river 
in Lowell. Their nests, which are very conspicuous, 
look more like art than anything in the river. 

If we had leisure this afternoon, we might turn our 
prow up the brooks in quest of the classical trout 
and the minnows. Of the last alone, according to 
M. Agassiz, several of the species found in this town, 



28 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

are yet undescribed. These would, perhaps, com- 
plete the list of our finny contemporaries in the 
Concord waters. 

Salmon, Shad, and Alewives, were formerly abundant 
here, and taken in weirs by the Indians, who taught 
this method to the whites, by whom they were used 
as food and as manure, until the dam, and afterward 
the canal at Billerica, and the factories at Lowell, put 
an end to their migrations hitherward ; though it is 
thought that a few more enterprising shad may still 
occasionally be seen in this part of the river. It is 
said, to account for the destruction of the fishery, that 
those who at that time represented the interests of 
the fishermen and the fishes, remembering between 
what dates they were accustomed to take the grown 
shad, stipulated, that the dams should be left open 
for that season only, and the fry, which go down a 
month later, were consequently stopped and destroyed 
by myriads. Others say that the fish-ways were not 
properly constructed. Perchance, after a few thou- 
sands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and pass 
their summers elsewhere, meanwhile, nature will have 
levelled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, 
and the Grass-ground River run clear again, to be 
explored by new migratory shoals, even as far as the 
Hopkinton pond and Westborough swamp. 

One would like to know more of that race, now 
extinct, whose seines lie rotting in the garrets of their 
children, who openly professed the trade of fishermen, 
and even fed their townsmen creditably, not skulking 
through the meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim 
visions we still get of miraculous draughts of fishes, 
and heaps uncountable by the river-side, from the 
tales of our seniors sent on horse-back in their 



SA TURD A V. 29 

childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on 
saddle-bags, with instructions to get the one bag 
filled with shad, the other with ale wives. At least 
one memento of those days may still exist in the 
memory of this generation, in the familiar appellation 
of a celebrated train-band of this town, whose untrained 
ancestors stood creditably at Concord North Bridge. 
Their captain, a man of piscatory tastes, having duly 
warned his company to turn out on a certain day, 
they, like obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on 
parade at the appointed time, but, unfortunately, they 
went undrilled, except in the manoeuvres of a soldier's 
wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day ; for their 
captain, forgetting his own appointment, and warned 
only by the favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had 
often done before, went a fishing that afternoon, and 
his company thenceforth was known to old and young, 
grave and gay, as " The Shad," and by the youths of 
this vicinity, this was long regarded as the proper 
name of all the irregular militia in Christendom. 
But, alas, no record of these fishers' lives remains, 
that we know of, unless it be one brief page of hard 
but unquestionable history, which occurs in Day Book 
No. 4, of an old trader of this town, long since dead, 
which shows pretty plainly what constituted a fisher- 
man's stock in trade in those days. It purports to be 
a Fisherman's Account Current, probably for the fish- 
ing season of the year 1805, during which months he 
purchased daily rum and sugar, sugar and rum, N. E. 
and W. I., " one cod line," " one brown mug," and " a 
line for the seine ; " rum and sugar, sugar and rum, 
"good loaf sugar," and "good brown," W. I. and 
N. E., in short and uniform entries to the bottom of 
the page, all carried out in pounds, shillings, and pence, 



30 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

from March 25th to June 5th, and promptly settled by 
receiving '' cash in full " at the last date. But perhaps 
not so settled altogether. These were the necessaries 
of life in those days ; with salmon, shad, and alewives, 
fresh and pickled, he was thereafter independent on 
the groceries. Rather a preponderance of the fluid 
elements; but such was this fisherman's nature. I 
can faintly remember to have seen the same fisher 
in my earliest youth, still as near the river as he 
could get, with uncertain undulatory step, after so 
many things had gone down stream, swinging a 
scythe in the meadow, his bottle like a serpent hid 
in the grass ; himself as yet not cut down by the 
Great Mower. 

Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's 
laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to 
man's daily life they rarely seem rigid, but permit 
him to relax with license in sunimer weather. He 
is not harshly reminded of the things he may not 
do. She is very kind and liberal to all men of vicious 
habits, and certainly does not deny them quarter; 
they do not die without priest. Still they maintain 
life along the way, keeping this side the Styx, still 
hearty, still resolute, " never better in their lives ; " 
and again, after a dozen years have elapsed, they 
start up from behind a hedge, asking for work and 
wages for able-bodied men. Who has not met such 

" a beggar on the way, 

Who sturdily could gang ? " * * * 
" Who cared neither for wind nor wet, 
In lands where'er he past ? " 

" That bold adopts each house he views, his own ; 
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure, 
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Ceesar; " — 



SATURDAY. 3 1 

As if consistency were the secret of health, while the 
poor inconsistent aspirant man, seeking to live a pure 
life, feeding on air, divided against himself, cannot 
stand, but pines and dies after a life of sickness, on 
beds of down. 

The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some 
were not sick; but methinks the difference between 
men in respect to health is not great enough to lay 
much stress upon. Some are reputed sick and some 
are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the 
nurse to the sounder. 

Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River 
at Lowell, where they are said to be a month earlier 
than the Merrimack shad, on account of the warmth 
of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with 
instinct not to be discouraged, not to be reasoned 
with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their stern fates 
would relent, and still met by the Corporation with 
its dam. Poor shad ! where is thy redress? When 
Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to 
bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly 
armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if 
man has perchance left them free for thee to enter. 
By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, 
merely stemming the tide there, in danger from sea 
foes in spite of thy bright armor, awaiting new instruc- 
tions, until the sands, until the water itself, tell thee 
if it be so or not. Thus by whole migrating nations, 
full of instinct, which is thy faith, in this backward 
spring, turned adrift, and perchance knowest not 
where men do 7wt dwell, where there are ?iot factories, 
in these days. Armed with no sword, no electric 
shock, but mere Shad, armed only with innocence and 
a just cause, with tender dumb mouth only forward, 



32 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and scales easy to be detached. I for one am with 
thee, and who knows what may avail a crow-bar 
against that Billerica dam ? — Not despairing when 
whole myriads have gone to feed those sea monsters 
during thy suspense, but still brave, indifferent, on 
easy fin there, like shad reserved for higher destinies. 
Willing to be decimated for man's behoof after the 
spawning season. Away with the superficial and 
selfish •ph.\\-a7ithropy of men, — who knows what ad- 
mirable virtue of fishes may be below low-water mark, 
bearing up against a hard destiny, not admired by that 
fellow creature who alone can appreciate it ! Who 
hears the fishes when they cry? It will not be for- 
gotten by some memory that we were contemporaries. 
Thou shalt ere long have thy way up the rivers, up 
all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mistaken. 
Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall be more than 
realized. If it were not so, but thou wert to be over- 
looked at first and at last, then would not I take their 
heaven. Yes, I say so, who think I know better than 
thou canst. Keep a stiff fin then, and stem all the 
tides thou mayest meet. 

At length it would seem that the interests, not of 
the fishes only, but of the men of Wayland, of Sud- 
bury, of Concord, demand the levelling of that dam. 
Innumerable acres of meadow are waiting to be made 
dry land, wild native grass to give place to English. 
The farmers stand with scythes whet, waiting the sub- 
siding of the waters, by gravitation, by evaporation 
or otherwise, but sometimes their eyes do not rest, 
their wheels do not roll, on the quaking meadow 
ground during the haying season at all. So many 
sources of wealth inaccessible. They rate the loss 
hereby incurred in the single town of Wayland alone 



SATURDAY, 33 

as equal to the expense of keeping a hundred yoke 
of oxen the year round. One year, as I learn, not 
long ago, the farmers standing ready to drive their 
teams afield as usual, the water gave no signs of fall- 
ing; without new attraction in the heavens, without 
freshet or visible cause, still standing stagnant at an 
unprecedented height. All hydrometers were at fault ; 
some trembled for their English even. But speedy 
emissaries revealed the unnatural secret, in the new 
float-board, wholly a foot in width, added to their 
already too high privileges by the dam proprietors. 
The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing 
patient, gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inac- 
cessible waving native grass, uncut but by the great 
mower Time, who cuts so broad a swathe, without so 
much as a wisp to wind about their horns. 

That was a long pull from Ball's Hill to CarHsle 
Bridge, sitting with our faces to the south, a slight 
breeze rising from the north, but nevertheless water 
still runs and grass grows, for now, having passed the 
bridge between Carlisle and Bedford, we see men hay- 
ing far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the 
grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed 
to bend all alike. As the night stole over, such a fresh- 
ness was wafted across the meadow that every blade 
of cut-grass seemed to teem with life. Faint purple 
clouds began to be reflected in the water, and the 
cow-bells tinkled louder along the banks, while, like 
sly water rats, we stole along nearer the shore, look- 
ing for a place to pitch our camp. 

At length, when we had made about seven miles, 
as far as Billerica, we moored our boat on the west 
side of a httle rising ground which in the spring forms 



34 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

an island in the river. Here we found huckleberries still 
hanging upon the bushes, where they seemed to have 
slowly ripened for our especial use. Bread and sugar, 
and cocoa boiled in river water, made our repast, and 
as we had drank in the fluvial prospect all day, so 
now we took a draught of the water with our evening 
meal to propitiate the river gods, and whet our vision 
for the sights it was to behold. The sun was setting 
on the one hand, while our eminence was contributing 
its shadow to the night, on the other. It seemed in- 
sensibly to grow lighter as the night shut in, and a 
distant and solitary farm-house was revealed, which 
before lurked in the shadows of the noon. There 
was no other house in sight, nor any cultivated field. 
To the right and left, as far as the horizon, were 
straggling pine woods with their plumes against the 
sky, and across the river were rugged hills, covered 
with shrub oaks, tangled with grape vines and ivy, 
with here and there a gray rock jutting out from the 
maze. The sides of these cliffs, though a quarter of 
a mile distant, were almost heard to rustle while we 
looked at them, it was such a leafy wilderness ; a place 
for fauns and satyrs, and where bats hung all day to 
the rocks, and at evening flitted over the water, and 
fireflies husbanded their light under the grass and 
leaves against the night. When we had pitched our 
tents on the hill-side, a few rods from the shore, we 
sat looking through its triangular door in the twilight 
at our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the 
alders, and hardly yet come to a stand-still from the 
swaying of the stream ; the first encroachment of com- 
merce on this land. There was our port, our Ostia. 
That straight geometrical line against the water and 
the sky stood for the last refinements of civilized life, 



SATURDAY. 35 

and what of sublimity there is in history was there 
symbolized. 

For the most part, there was no recognition of 
human life in the night, no human breathing was 
heard, only the breathing of the wdnd. As we sat 
up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation, we 
heard at intervals foxes stepping about over the dead 
leaves, and brushing the dewy grass close to our tent, 
and once a musquash fumbling among the potatoes 
and melons in our boat, but when we hastened to the 
shore we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffling 
the disk of a star. At intervals we were serenaded by 
the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry 
of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand 
broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the 
twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden 
pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if 
the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully 
abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as 
we judged, this night, and we saw the horizon blaz- 
ing, and heard the distant alarm bells, as it were a 
faint tinkling music borne to these woods. But the 
most constant and memorable sound of a summer's 
night, which we did not fail to hear every night after- 
ward, though at no time so incessantly and so favora- 
bly as now, was the barking of the house dogs, from 
the loudest and hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial 
palpitation under the eaves of heaven, from the patient 
but anxious mastiff to the timid and wakeful terrier, 
at first loud and rapid, then faint and slow, to be 
imitated only in a whisper ; wow-wow-wow-wow — 
wo — wo — w — w. Even in a retired and uninhabited 
district like this, it was a sufficiency of sound for the 
ear of night, and more impressive than any music. 



36 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

I have heard the voice of a hound, just before day- 
light, while the stars were shining, from over the 
woods and river, far in the horizon, when it sounded 
as sweet and melodious as an instrument. The 
hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal 
in the horizon, may have first suggested the notes 
of the hunting horn to alternate with and relieve the 
lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded 
in the woods of the ancient world before the horn 
was invented. The very dogs that sullenly bay the 
moon from farm-yards in these nights, excite more 
heroism in our breasts than all the civil exhortations 
or war sermons of the age. "I had rather be a dog, 
and bay the moon," than many a Roman that I know. 
The night is equally indebted to the clarion of the 
cock, with wakeful hope, from the very setting of the 
sun, prematurely ushering in the dawn. All these 
sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, 
and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of 
nature's health or sound state. Such is the never 
failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most 
perfect art in the world ; the chisel of a thousand 
years retouches it. 

At length the antepenultimate and drowsy hours 
drew on, and all sounds were denied entrance to our 
ears. 

Who sleeps by day and walks by night, 
Will meet no spirit but some sprite. 



SUNDAY. 

" The river calmly flows, 
Through shining banks, through lonely glen. 
Where the owl shrieks, though ne'er the cheer of men 

Has stirred its mute repose. 
Still if you should walk there, you would go there again." 

— Chatining. 

" The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the 
south, which they call Merrimac." 

Sieur de Monts. Relations of the Jesuits, 1604. 

In the morning the river and adjacent country were 
covered with a dense fog, through which the smoke 
of our fire curled up like a still subtiler mist ; but 
before we had rowed many rods, the sun arose and 
the fog rapidly dispersed, leaving a slight steam only 
to curl along the surface of the water. It was a quiet 
Sunday morning, with more of the auroral rosy and 
white than of the yellow light in it, as if it dated from 
earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a 
heathenish integrity ; — 

An early unconverted Saint, 

Free from noontide or evening taint, 

Heathen without reproach, 

That did upon the civil day encroach, 

And ever since its birth 

Had trod the outskirts of the earth. 

But the impressions which the morning makes 
vanish with its dews, and not even the most "per- 

37 



38 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

severing mortal" can preserve the memory of its 
freshness to mid-day. As we passed the various 
islands, or what were islands in the spring, rowing 
with our backs down stream, we gave names to them. 
The one on which we had camped we called Fox 
Island, and one fine densely wooded island sur- 
rounded by deep water and overrun by grape vines, 
which looked like a mass of verdure and of flowers 
cast upon the waves, we named Grape Island. From 
Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house, the river was 
still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark, and 
dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and some- 
times cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a 
long woodland lake bordered with willows. For long 
reaches we could see neither house nor cultivated field, 
nor any sign of the vicinity of man. Now we coasted 
along some shallow shore by the edge of a dense pali- 
sade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded the water 
as if dipt by art, reminding us of the reed forts of tlie 
East Indians, of which we had read ; and now the 
bank slightly raised was overhung with graceful 
grasses and various species of brake, whose downy 
stems stood closely grouped and naked as in a vase, 
while their heads spread several feet on either side. 
The dead limbs of the willow were rounded and 
adorned by the climbing mikania, mikania scandens, 
which filled every crevice in the leafy bank, contrast- 
ing agreeably with the gray bark of its supporter and 
the balls of the button-bush. The water willow, salix 
Pitrshiana^ when it is of large size and entire, is the 
most gracefiil and ethereal of our trees. Its masses 
of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the 
height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on 
the surface of the water, while the slight gray stems 



SUNDA Y. 39 

and the shore were hardly visible between them. No 
tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well 
with still streams. It is even more graceful than the 
weeping willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip 
their branches in the stream instead of being buoyed 
up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface 
as if attracted by it. It had not a New England but 
an oriental character, reminding us of trim Persian 
gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the artificial lakes 
of the east. 

As we thus dipped our way along between fresh 
masses of foliage overrun with the grape and smaller 
flowering vines, the surface was so calm, and both air 
and water so transparent, that the flight of a king- 
fisher or robin over the river was as distinctly seen 
reflected in the water below as in the air above. The 
birds seemed to flit through submerged groves, alight- 
ing on the yielding sprays, and their clear notes to 
come up from below. We were uncertain whether 
the water floated the land, or the land held the water 
in its bosom. It was such a season, in short, as that 
in which one of our Concord poets sailed on its stream^ 
and sung its quiet glories. 

" There is an inward voice, that in the stream 
Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear, 
And in a calm content it floweth on, 
Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect. 
Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts, 
It doth receive the green and graceful trees, 
And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms, — " 

And more he sung, but too serious for our page. For 
every oak and birch too growing on the hill-top, as 
well as for these elms and willows, we knew that there 



40 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

was a graceful ethereal and ideal tree making down 
from the roots, and sometimes nature in high tides 
brings her mirror to its foot and makes it visible. 
The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as 
if it were a natural Sabbath. The air was so elastic 
and crystalline that it had the same effect on the land- 
scape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal 
remoteness and perfection. The landscape was clothed 
in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences 
checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and 
rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like 
smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely dis- 
tinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang 
over fairy-land. The world seemed decked for some 
holyday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers 
flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before 
us like a green lane into a country maze, at the season 
when fruit trees are in blossom. 

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be 
actually thus fair and distinct ? All our lives want a 
suitable background. They should at least, like the 
life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as 
objects in the desert, a broken shaft or crumbling 
mound against a limitless horizon. Character always 
secures for itself this advantage, and is thus distinct 
and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether things 
or persons. On this same stream a maiden once sailed 
in my boat, thus unattended but by invisible guardians, 
and as she sat in the prow there was nothing but her- 
self between the steersman and the sky. I could then 
say with the poet ; — 



" Sweet falls the summer air 
Over her frame who sails with me ; 



SUNDAY. 41 

Her way like that is beautifully free, 

Her nature far more rare, 

And is her constant heart of virgin purity." 

At evening still the very stars seem but this maiden^s 
emissaries and reporters of her progress. 

Low in the eastern sky 
Is set thy glancing eye ; 
And though its gracious light 
Ne'er riseth to my sight, 
Yet every star that climbs 
Above the gnarled limbs 

Of yonder hill, 
Conveys thy gentle will. 

Believe I knew thy thought, 
And that the zephyrs brought 
Thy kindest wishes through, 
As mine they bear to you, 
That some attentive cloud 
Did pause amid the crowd 

Over my head. 
While gentle things were said. 

Believe the thrushes sung, 
And that the flower bells rung, 
That herbs exhaled their scent, 
And beasts knew what was meant, 
The trees a welcome waved. 
And lakes their margins laved, 

When thy free mind 
To my retreat did wind. 

It was a summer eve. 
The air did gently heave, 
While yet a low hung cloud 
Thy eastern skies did shroud ; 
The lightning's silent gleam, 
Startling my drowsy dream, 
Seemed like the flash 
Under thy dark eyelash. 



42 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Still will I strive to be 
As if thou wert with me; 
Whatever path I take, 
It shall be for thy sake, 
Of gentle slope and wide, 
As thou wert by my side. 

Without a root 
To trip thy gentle foot. 

I '11 walk with gentle pace, 
And choose the smoothest place, 
And careful dip the oar, 
And shun the winding shore, 
And gently steer my boat 
Where water lilies float. 

And cardinal flowers 
Stand in their sylvan bowers. 

It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat 
the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every 
twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected ; 
too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only nature 
may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water 
is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are 
reflected there is more than Atlantic depth, and no 
danger of fancy running aground. We noticed that 
it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free 
and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and 
the sky, than to see the river bottom merely ; and so 
are there manifold visions in the direction of every 
object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens 
from their surface. Some men have their eyes natu- 
rally intended to the one, and some to the other object. 

" A man that looks on glass, 
On it may stay his eye. 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass. 
And the heavens espy." 



SUNDA Y. 43 

Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, 
floating buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, 
like a feather in mid air, or a leaf which is wafted 
gently from its twig to the water without turning over, 
seemed still in their element, and to have very deli- 
cately availed themselves of the natural laws. Their 
floating there was a beautiful and successful experi- 
ment in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble in 
our eyes the art of navigation, for as birds fly and 
fishes swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us 
how much fairer and nobler all the actions of man 
might be, and that our life in its whole economy 
might be as beautiful as the fairest works of art or 
nature. 

The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and glanced 
from every pad ; the bulrushes and flags seemed to 
rejoice in the delicious light and air; the meadows 
were a drinking at their leisure ; the frogs sat medi- 
tating, all Sabbath thoughts, summing up their week, 
with one eye out on the golden sun, and one toe 
upon a reed, eyeing the wondrous universe in which 
they act their part ; the fishes swam more staid and 
soberly, as maidens go to church ; shoals of golden 
and silver minnows rose to the surface to behold the 
heavens, and then sheered off" into more sombre 
aisles ; they swept by as if moved by one mind, con- 
tinually gliding past each other, and yet preserving 
the form of their battalion unchanged, as if they were 
still embraced by the transparent membrane which 
held the spawn ; a young band of brethren and 
sisters, trying their new fins ; now they wheeled, 
now shot ahead, and when we drove them to the 
shore and cut them off", they dexterously tacked 
and passed underneath the boat. Over the old 



44 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

wooden bridges no traveller crossed, and neither 
the river nor the fishes avoided to glide between 
the abutments. 

Here was a village not far off behind the woods, 
Billerica, settled not long ago, and the children still 
bear the names of the first settlers in this late " howl- 
ing wilderness ; " yet to all intents and purposes it is 
as old as Fernay or as Mantua, an old gray town, 
where men grow old and sleep already under moss- 
grown monuments,— outgrow their usefulness. This 
is ancient Billerica (Villarica?), now in its dotage. I 
never heard that it was young. See, is not nature 
here gone to decay, farms all run out, meeting-house 
grown gray and racked with age? If you would 
know of its early youth, ask those old gray rocks in 
the pasture. It has a bell that sounds sometimes as 
far as Concord woods ; I have heard that, aye, — 
hear it now. No wonder that such a sound startled 
the dreaming Indian, and frightened his game, when 
the first bells were swung on trees, and sounded 
through the forest beyond the plantations of the white 
man. But to-day I like best the echo amid these cliffs 
and woods. It is no feeble imitation, but rather its 
original, or as if some rural Orpheus played over the 
strain again to show how it should sound. 



Dong, sounds the brass in the east, 
As if to a funeral feast, 
But I like that sound the best 
Out of the fluttering west. 

The steeple ringeth a knell, 
But the fairies' silvery bell 
Is the voice of that gentle folk. 
Or else the horizon that spoke. 



SUNDA Y. 45 

Its metal is not of brass, 
But air, and water, and glass, 
And under a cloud it is swung, 
And by the wind it is rung. 

When the steeple tolleth the noon, 

It soundeth not so soon. 

Yet it rings a far earlier hour, 

And the sun has not reached its tower. 

On the other hand, the road runs up to Carlisle, city 
of the woods, which, if it is less civil, is the more 
natural. It does well hold the earth together. It 
gets laughed at because it is a small town, I know, but 
nevertheless it is a place where great men may be 
born any day, for fair winds and foul blow right on 
over it without distinction. It has a meeting-house 
and horse-sheds, a tavern and a blacksmith's shop for 
centre, and a good deal of wood to cut and cord yet. 
And 

" Bedford, most noble Bedford, 
I shall not thee forget." 

History has remembered thee ; especially that meek 
and humble petition of thy old planters, like the wail- 
ing of the Lord's own people, " To the gentlemen, the 
selectmen " of Concord, praying to be erected into a 
separate parish. We can hardly credit that so plain- 
tive a psalm resounded but little more than a century 
ago along these Babylonish waters. " In the extreme 
difficult seasons of heat and cold," said they, '•' we were 
ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what a weariness 
is it." — "Gentlemen, if our seeking to draw off proceed 
from any disaffection to our present reverend pastor, 
or the Christian society with whom we have taken 
such sweet counsel together, and walked unto the 



46 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

house of God in company, then hear us not this day, 
but we greatly desire, if God please, to be eased of 
our burden on the Sabbath, the travel and fatigue 
thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us, near 
to our houses, and in our hearts, that we and our little 
ones may serve the Lord. We hope that God, who 
stirred up the spirit of Cyrus to set forward temple 
work, has stirred us up to ask, and will stir you up 
to grant, the prayer of our petition ; so shall your 
humble petitioners ever pray, as in duty bound, — ." 
And so the temple work went forward here to a 
happy conclusion. Yonder in Carlisle the building 
of the temple was many wearisome years delayed, not 
that there was wanting of Shittim wood, or the gold 
of Ophir, but a site therefor convenient to all the 
worshippers ; whether on " Buttrick's Plain," or 
rather on " Poplar Hill : " it was a tedious question. 

In this Billerica solid men must have lived, select 
from year to year, a series of town clerks, at least, and 
there are old records that you may search. Some 
spring the white man came, built him a house, and 
made a clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a 
farm, piled up the old gray stones in fences, cut down 
the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds 
brought from the old country, and persuaded the 
civil apple tree to blossom next to the wild pine and 
the juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness. 
Their old stocks still remain. He culled the graceful 
elm from out the woods and from the river-side, and 
so refined and smoothed his village plot. And thus 
he plants a town. He rudely bridged the stream, and 
drove his team afield into the river meadows, cut the 
wild grass, and laid bare the homes of beaver, otter, 
muskrat, and with the whetting of his scythe scared off 



SUNDA y. 47 

the deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of 
English grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with 
his grain he scattered the seeds of the dandelion and 
the wild trefoil over the meadows, mingling his Eng- 
lish flowers with the wild native ones. The bristling 
burdock, the sweet scented catnip, and the humble 
yarrow, planted themselves along his woodland road, 
they too seeking " freedom to worship God " in their 
way. The white man's mullein soon reigned in 
Indian corn-fields, and sweet scented EngHsh grasses 
clothed the new soil. Where, then, could the red 
man set his foot? The honey bee hummed through 
the Massachusetts' woods, and sipped the wild flowers 
round the Indian's wigwam, perchance unnoticed, 
when, with prophetic warning, it stung the red child's 
hand, forerunner of that industrious tribe that was to 
come and pluck the wild flower of his race up by the 
root. 

The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a 
load of thought, with a slumbering intelligence as a 
fire raked up, knowing well what he knows, not 
guessing but calculating ; strong in community, yield- 
ing obedience to authority ; of experienced race ; of 
wonderful, wonderful common sense ; dull but capa- 
ble, slow but persevering, severe but just, of little 
humor but genuine ; a laboring man, despising game 
and sport ; building a house that endures, a framed 
house. He buys the Indian's moccasins and baskets, 
then buys his hunting grounds, and at length forgets 
where he is buried, and plows up his bones. And 
here town records, old, tattered, time-worn, weather- 
stained chronicles, contain the Indian sachem's mark, 
perchance an arrow or a beaver, and the few fatal 
words by which he deeded his hunting grounds away. 



48 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

He comes with a list of ancient Saxon, Norman, and 
Celtic names, and strews them up and down this 
river, — Framingham, Sudbury, Bedford, Carlisle, Bil- 
lerica, Chelmsford, — and this is New Angle-land, 
and these are the new West Saxons, whom the red 
men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese, 
and so at last they are known for Yankees. 

When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica, 
the fields on either hand had a soft and cultivated 
English aspect, the village spire being seen over the 
copses which skirt the river, and sometimes an orchard 
straggled down to the water side, though, generally, 
our course this forenoon was the wildest part of our 
voyage. It seemed that men led a quiet and very 
civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly culti- 
vators of the earth, and lived under an organized po- 
litical government. The school-house stood with a 
meek aspect, entreating a long truce to war and sav- 
age life. Every one finds by his own experience, as 
well as in history, that the era in which men cultivate 
the apple, and the amenities of the garden, is essen- 
tially different from that of the hunter and forest life, 
and neither can displace the other without loss. We 
have all had our day dreams, as well as more pro- 
phetic nocturnal visions, but as for farming, I am 
convinced that my genius dates from an older era 
than the agricultural. I would at least strike my 
spade into the earth with such careless freedom but 
accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree. 
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning 
toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming quali- 
ties in myself but a sincere love for some things, and 
when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground. 
What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow 



SUNDA Y. 49 

than you see. Where the off ox treads, there is it 
not, it is further off; where the nigh ox walks, it 
will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop 
fails not, and what are drought and rain to me? The 
rude Saxon pioneer will sometimes pine for that re- 
finement and artificial beauty which are English, and 
love to hear the sound of such sweet and classical 
names as the Pentland and Malvern Hills, the Cliffs 
of Dover and the Trossacks, Richmond, Derwent, and 
Winandermere, which are to him now instead of the 
Acropolis and Parthenon, of Baiae, and Athens with 
its sea walls, and Arcadia and Tempe. 

Greece, who am I that should remember thee, 

Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylae? 

Is my life vulgar, my fate mean, 

Which on these golden memories can lean? 

We are apt enough to be pleased with such books 
as Evelyn's Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hor- 
tense, but they imply a relaxed nerve in the reader. 
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor 
and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may 
be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, 
until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly culti- 
vated man. — all whose bones can be bent! whose 
heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The 
young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year 
to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civil- 
izing the Indian, but that is not the name for his im- 
provement. By the wary independence and aloofness 
of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with 
his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to 
a rare and peculiar society with nature. He has 
glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are 



50 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, 
dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfy- 
ing light of the stars compared with the dazzling but 
ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The 
Society Islanders had their day-born gods, but they 
were not supposed to be " of equal antiquity with the 
atua fauaii po, or night-born gods." It is true, there 
are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is 
sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her in- 
crease, and gather the fruits in their season, but the 
heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter retire- 
ments and more rugged paths. It will have its gar- 
den plots and its parterres elsewhere than on the 
earth, and gather nuts and berries by the way for its 
subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness 
as berries. We would not always be soothing and 
taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but 
sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo. 
The Indiana's intercourse with Nature is at least such 
as admits of the greatest independence of each. If 
he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gar- 
dener is too much of a familiar. There is something 
vulgar and foul in the latter's closeness to his mistress, 
something noble and cleanly in the former''s distance. 
In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degener- 
ates at length, and yields to the incursion of more 
northern tribes, 

" Some nation yet shut in 
With hills of ice." 

There are other, savager. and more primeval aspects 
of nature than our poets have sung. It is only white 
man's poetry. Honier and Ossian even can never 
revive in London or Boston. And yet behold how 



SUNDAY. 51 

these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition, or 
the imperfectly transmitted fragrance and flavor of 
these wild fruits. If we could listen but for an instant 
to the chaunt of the Indian muse, we should under- 
stand why he will not exchange his savage ness for 
civilization. Nations are not whimsical. Steel and 
blankets are strong temptations ; but the Indian does 
well to continue Indian. 

After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the 
poets, I have been out early on a foggy morning, and 
heard the cry of an owl in a neighboring wood as from 
a nature behind the common, unexplored by science 
or by literature. None of the feathered race has yet 
realized my youthful conceptions of the woodland 
depths. I had seen the red Election-bird brought 
from their recesses on my comrades' string, and fan- 
cied that their plumage would assume stranger and 
more dazzling colors, like the tints of evening, in pro- 
portion as I advanced further into the darkness and 
solitude of the forest. Still less have I seen such 
strong and wild tints on any poet's string. 

These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not 
affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and 
fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and 
simple form ; as ancient and honorable trades as the 
sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the 
faculties of man, and invented when these were in- 
vented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or 
Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make 
them to have been gradually learned and taught. Ac- 
cording to Gower, 

"And ladahel, as saith the boke, 
Firste made nette, and fishes toke. 



52 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Of huntyng eke he fond the chace, 
Whiche nowe is knowe in many place; 
A tent of clothe, with corde and stake, 
He sette up first, and did it make." 

Also, Lydgate says : 

Jason first sayled, in story it is tolde, 
• Toward Colchos, to wynne the flees of golde. 
Ceres the Goddess fond first the tilthe of londe ; 

***** 
Also, Aristeus fonde first the usage 
Of mylke, and cruddis, and of honey swote ; 
Peryodes, for grete avauntage, 
From flyntes smote fuyre, daryng in the roote." 

We read that Aristeus "obtained of Jupiter and 
Neptune, tliat the pestilential heat of the dog days, 
wherein was great mortality, should be mitigated with 
wind." This is one of those dateless benefits con- 
ferred on man, which have no record in our vulgar 
day, though we still find some similitude to them in 
our dreams, in which we have a more liberal and 
juster apprehension of things, unconstrained by habit, 
which is then in some measure put off, and divested 
of memory, which we call history. 

According to fable, when the island of ^gina was 
depopulated by sickness, at the instance of ^acus, 
Jupiter turned the ants into men, that is, as some 
think, he made men of the inhabitants who lived 
meanly like ants. This is perhaps the fullest history 
of those early days extant. 

The fable which is naturally and truly composed, 
so as to satisfy the imagination, ere it addresses the 
understanding, beautiful though strange as a wild 
flower, is to the wise man an apothegm, and admits 



SUNDAY. 53 

of his most generous interpretation. When we read 
that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners mad, so 
that they leapt into the sea, mistaking it for a meadow 
full of flowers, and so became dolphins, we are not 
concerned about the historical truth of this, but rather 
a higher poetical truth. We seem to hear the music 
of a thought, and care not if the understanding be not 
gratified. For their beauty, consider the fables of 
Narcissus, of Endymion, of Memnon son of Morning, 
the representative of all promising youths who have 
died a premature death, and whose memory is melo- 
diously prolonged to the latest morning ; the beautiful 
stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone 
afar off white with the bones of unburied men ; and 
the pregnant ones of Pan, Prometheus, and the 
Sphynx; and that long list of names which have 
already become part of the universal language of 
civilized men, and from proper are becoming common 
names or nouns, — the Sibyls, the Eumenides, the 
Parcae, the Graces, the Muses, Nemesis, &c. 

It is interesting to observe with what singular 
unanimity the furthest sundered nations and genera- 
tions consent to give completeness and roundness to 
an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate 
the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like 
effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific 
body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to 
the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately 
discovered planet Neptune ; or the asteroid Astraea, 
that the Virgin who was driven from earth to heaven 
at the end of the golden age, may have her local 
habitation in the heavens more distinctly assigned 
her, — for the slightest recognition of poetic worth is 
significant. By such slow aggregation has mythol- 



54 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

ogy grown from the first. The very nursery tales 
of this generation, were the nursery tales of primeval 
races. They migrate from east to west, and again 
from west to east; now expanded into the 'tale 
divine' of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme. 
This is an approach to that universal language which 
men have sought in vain. This fond reiteration of 
the oldest expressions of truth by the latest poster- 
ity, content with slightly and religiously re-touching 
the old material, is the most impressive proof of a 
common humanity. 

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, 
Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated 
suffice for all. All men are children, and of one 
family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and 
wakes them in the morning. Joseph Wolff, the mis- 
sionary, distributed copies of Robinson Crusoe, trans- 
lated into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they made 
a great sensation. " Robinson Crusoe's adventures 
and wisdom," says he, " were read by Mahometans in 
the market-places of Sanaa, Hodyeda, and Loheya, 
and admired and believed ! " On reading the book, 
the Arabians exclaimed, " Oh, that Robinson Crusoe 
must have been a great prophet ! " 

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient 
history and biography. So far from being false or 
fabulous in the common sense, it contains only endur- 
ing and essential truth, the I and you, the here and 
there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time 
or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was dis- 
covered, a century was equal to a thousand years. 
The poet is he who can write some pure mythology 
to-day without the aid of posterity. In how few 
words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the 



SUNDA V. 



55 



story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence 
for our classical dictionary, — and then, perchance 
have stuck up their names to shine in some corner 
of the firmament. We moderns, on the other hand, 
collect only the raw materials of biography and his- 
tory, " memoirs to serve for a history,'' which itself is 
but materials to serve for a mythology. How many 
volumes folio would the Life and Labors of Prome- 
theus have filled, if perchance it had fallen, as per- 
chance it did first, in days of cheap printing! Who 
knows what shape the fable of Columbus will at 
length assume, to be confounded with that of Jason 
and the expedition of the Argonauts. And Frank- 
lin, — there may be a line for him in the future classi- 
cal dictionary, recording what that demigod did, and 

referring him to some new genealogy. " Son of 

and . He aided the Americans to gain their 

independence, instructed mankind in economy, and 
drew down lightning from the clouds." 

The hidden significance of these fables which is 
sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics 
running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so 
remarkable as the readiness with which they may be 
made] to express a variety of truths. As if they were 
the skeletons of still older and more universal truths 
than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time 
made to wear. It is like striving to rhake the sun, or 
the wind, or the sea, symbols to signify exclusively 
the particular thoughts of our day. But what signi- 
fies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence 
uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as 
its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the 
history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy 
fables precede the noon-day thoughts of men, as 



56 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the 
poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, 
always dwells in this auroral atmosphere. 

As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, 
but its scenery is the more suggestive to the contem- 
plative voyager, and this day its water was fuller 
of reflections than our pages even. Just before it 
reaches the falls in Billerica it is contracted, and be- 
comes swifter and shallower, with a yellow pebbly 
bottom, hardly passable for a canal boat, leaving the 
broader and more stagnant portion above like a lake 
among the hills. All through the Concord, Bedford, 
and Billerica meadows, we had heard no murmur 
from its stream, except where some tributary runnel 
tumbled in, — 

Some tumultuous little rill, 

Purling round its storied pebble, 
Tinkling to the self-same tune, 
From September until June, 

Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble. 

Silent flows the parent stream. 

And if rocks do lie below. 
Smothers with her waves the din, 
As it were a youthful sin, 

Just as still, and just as slow. 

But now at length we heard this staid and primitive 
river rushing to her fall, like any rill. We here left 
its channel, just above the Billerica Falls, and entered 
the canal, which runs, or rather is conducted, six 
miles through the woods to the Merrimack at Mid- 
dlesex, and as we did not care to loiter in this part 
of our voyage, while one ran along the tow-path 
drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off the 



SUNDAY. 57 

shore with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole 
distance in little more than an hour. This canal, 
which is the oldest in the country, and has even an 
antique look beside the more modern railroads, is fed 
by the Concord, so that we were still floating on its 
familiar waters. It is so much water which the river 
lets for the advantage of commerce. There ajDpeared 
some want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not 
of equal date with the woods and meadows through 
which it is led, and we missed the conciliatory influ- 
ence of time on land and water; but in the lapse 
of ages. Nature will recover and indemnify herself, 
and gradually plant fit shrubs and flowers along its 
borders. Already the kingfisher sat upon a pine 
over the water, and the bream and pickerel swam 
below. Thus all works pass directly out of the 
hands of the architect into the hands of Nature, to 
be perfected. 

It was a retired and pleasant route, without houses 
or travellers, except some young men who were loung- 
ing upon a bridge in Chelmsford, who leaned impu- 
dently over the rails to pry into our concerns, but we 
caught the eye of the most forward, and looked at 
him till he was visibly discomfited. Not that there 
was any peculiar efficacy in our look, but rather a 
sense of shame left in him which disarmed him. 

It is a very true and expressive phrase, " He looked 
daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype 
of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye. 
First, there was the glance of Jove's eye, then his 
fiery bolt, then, the material gradually hardening, 
tridents, spears, javelins, and finally, for the con- 
venience of private men, daggers, krisses, and so 
It is wonderful how we get 



58 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

about the streets without being wounded by these 
delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly 
whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it 
unsheathed. Yet after all, it is rare that one gets 
seriously looked at. 

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, 
just before reaching the Merrimack, the people com- 
ing out of church paused to look at us from above, 
and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in 
some heathenish comparisons ; but we were the truest 
observers of this sunny day. According to Hesiod, 

" The seventh is a holy day, 
For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo," 

and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the 
week, and not the first. I find among the papers of 
an old Justice of the Peace and Deacon of the town of 
Concord, this singular memorandum, which is worth 
preserving as a relic of an ancient custom. After 
reforming the spelling and grammar, it runs as fol- 
lows : — "Men that travelled with teams on the Sab- 
bath, Dec. 1 8th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richardson and 
Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They nad teams with 
rigging such as is used to carry barrels, and they were 
travelling westward. Richardson was questioned by 
the Hon. Ephraim Wood, Esq., and he said that 
Jonas Parker was his fellow traveller, and he further 
said that a Mr. Longley was his employer, who prom- 
ised to bear him out." We were the men that were 
gliding northward, this Sept. ist, 1839, with still 
team, and rigging not the most convenient to carry 
barrels, unquestioned by any Squire or Church Dea- 
con, and ready to bear ourselves out, if need were. 
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, accord- 



SUNDA V. 59 

ing to the historian of Dunstable, "Towns were 
directed to erect ^a cage'' near the meeting-house, and 
in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath 
were confined." Society has relaxed a little from its 
strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is 
not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is 
found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the 
tighter in another. 

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a 
life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection 
that the progress of science is slow. If he is not 
convinced, his grand-children may be. The geolo- 
gists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove 
that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty 
more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the 
Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake 
myself in extremities to the Hberal divinities of 
Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, 
though with us he has acquired new attributes, is 
more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more 
divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, 
among gods, not so gracious and catholic, he does not 
exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, 
as many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the 
infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty 
mortal, hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly mascu- 
line, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor 
Minerva, to intercede for me, ^u/xo) cfivXiovad re, 
KrjSo/jiivY) re. The Grecian are youthful and erring 
and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many 
important respects essentially of the divine race. In 
my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, 
with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy 
body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and 



6o A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

his chosen daughter lambe ; for the great God Pan is 
not dead, as was rumored. Perhaps of all the gods of 
New England and of ancient Greece, I am most con- 
stant at his shrine. 

It seems to me that the god that is commonly wor- 
shipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, 
though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelm- 
ing authority and respectability of mankind combined. 
Men reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought 
that I could speak with discrimination and impartial- 
ity of the nations of Christendom, I should praise 
them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be 
the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken. 
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances ; 
the Society Islanders had a god called Toahitu, " in 
shape like a dog ; he saved such as were in danger of 
falling from rocks and trees." I think that we can do 
without him, as we have not much climbing to do. 
Among them a man could make himself a god out of 
a piece of wood in a few minutes, which would frighten 
him out of his wits. 

I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old 
school, who had the supreme felicity to be born in 
" days that tried men's souls," hearing this, may say 
with Nestor, another of the old school, "But you 
are younger than I. For time was when I conversed 
with greater men than you. For not at any time have 
I seen such men nor shall see them, as Perithous, 
and Dryas, and Trocfxeva Aawv," that is probably 
Washington, sole " Shepherd of the People." And 
when Apollo has now six times rolled westward, or 
seemed to roll, and now for the sixth time shows his 
face in the east, eyes well nigh glazed, long glassed, 
which have fluctuated only between lamb's wool and 



SUNDAY. 6 1 

worsted, explore ceaselessly some good sermon book. 
For six days shalt thou labor and do all thy knitting, 
but on the seventh, forsooth thy reading. Happy we 
who can bask in this warm September sun, which illu- 
mines all creatures, as well when they rest as when 
they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude ; whose 
life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, 
on the Lord's Mona-day as on his Suna-day. 

There are various, nay incredible faiths ; why should 
we be alarmed at any of them ? What man believes, 
God believes. Long as I have lived, and many blas- 
phemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet 
heard or witnessed any direct and conscious blas- 
phemy or irreverence ; but of indirect and habitual 
enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct 
and personal insolence to Him that made him ? — Yet 
there are certain current expressions of blasphemous 
modes of viewing things, — as, frequently, when we 
say, " He is doing a good business," — more profane 
than cursing and swearing. There is sin and death 
in such words. Let not the children hear them. — 
My neighbor says that his hill farm is "poor stuff," 
"only fit to hold the world together," — and much 
more to that effect. He deserves that God should 
give him a better for so free a treating of his gifts, 
more than if he patiently put up therewith. But 
perhaps my farmer forgets that his lean soil has 
sharpened his wits. This is a crop it was good 
for. 

One memorable addition to the old mythology is 
due to this era, — the Christian fable. With what 
pains, and tears, and blood, these centuries have 
woven this and added it to the mythology of man- 
kind. The new Prometheus. With what miraculous 



62 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

consent, and patience, and persistency, has this 
mythus been stamped upon the memory of the race? 
It would seem as if it were in the progress of our 
mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in 
his stead. 

If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not 
what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ, 
— the history of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the 
Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, un- 
buried death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills, — 
think of it. In Tasso's poem I tnist some things are 
sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with 
which they preach Christianity still. What are time 
and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and 
a new world? — that the humble life of a Jewish peas- 
ant should have force to make a New York bishop so 
bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now 
burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre ; — a 
church bell ringing ; — some unaffected tears shed by 
a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week. — 

" Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my 
right hand forget her cunning." 

" By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and 
we wept when we remembered Zion." 

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha 
or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale 
of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian, 
to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of 
Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of 
me, when they hear their Christ named beside my 
Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should 
love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love 
is the main thing, and I like him too. Why need 
Christians be still intolerant and superstitious ? The 



SUNDA Y. 63 

simple minded sailors were unwilling to cast over- 
board Jonah at his own request. — 

" Where is this love become in later age? 
Alas ! 't is gone in endless pilgrimage 
From hence, and never to return, I doubt, 
Till revolution wheel those times about." 

One man says, — 

" The world 's a popular disease, that reigns 
Within the froward heart and frantic brains 
Of poor distempered mortals." 

Another that 

— ' all the world 's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players." 

The world is a strange place for a play-house to stand 
within it. Old Drayton thought that a man that hved 
here, and would be a poet, for instance, should have 
in him certain ^' brave translunary things," and a 
''fine madness" should possess his brain. Certainly 
it were as well, that he might be up to the occasion. 
That is a superfluous wonder, which Dr. Johnson 
expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne, 
that "his life has been a miracle of thirty years, 
which to relate, were not history, but a piece of 
poetry, and would sound like a fable." The wonder 
is rather that all men do not assert as much. 

Think what a mean and wretched place this world 
is ; that half the time we have to light a lamp that we 
may see to live in it. This is half our life. Who 
would undertake the enterprise if it were all? And, 
pra}', what more has day to offer? A lamp that burns 
more clear, a purer oil, say winter-strained, that so 
we may pursue our idleness with less obstruction. 



64 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, 
we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with 
hymns. 

I make ye an offer, 

Ye gods, hear the scoffer, 

The scheme will not hurt you, 

If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue. 

Though I am your creature, 

And child of your nature, 

I have pride still unbended, 

And blood undescended. 

Some free independence, 

And my own descendants. 

I cannot toil blindly, 

Though ye behave kindly, 

And I swear by the rood, 

I '11 be slave to no God. 

If ye will deal plainly, 

I will strive mainly, 

If ye will discover. 

Great plans to your lover, 

And give him a sphere 

Somewhat larger than here. 

" Verily, my angels ! I was abashed on account of 
my servant, who had no Providence but me; there- 
fore did I pardon him." — The Gulistan of Sadi. 

Most people with whom I talk, men and women 
even of some originality and genius, have their scheme 
of the universe all cut and dried, — very dry, I assure 
you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and pow- 
der-post, methinks, — which they set up between you 
and them in the shortest intercourse ; an ancient and 
tottering frame with all its boards blown off. They do 
not walk without their bed. Some to me seemingly 
very unimportant and unsubstantial things and rela- 



SUNDA Y. 65 

tions, are for them everlastingly settled, — as Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like. These are like 
the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wander- 
ings, I never came across the least vestige of author- 
ity for these things. They have not left so distinct 
a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological 
period on the coal in my grate. The wisest man 
preaches no doctrines ; he has no scheme ; he sees 
no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. 
It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time 
than at another, the medium through which I see is 
clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there 
standing, still a fixture, that old Jewish scheme! 
What right have you to hold up this obstacle to my 
understanding you, to your understanding me! You 
did not invent it ; it was imposed on you. Examine 
your authority. Even Christ, we fear, had his scheme, 
his conformity to tradition, which slightly vitiates his 
teaching. He had not swallowed all formulas. He 
preached some mere doctrines. As for me, Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, are now only the subtilest imagi- 
nable essences, which would not stain the morning sky. 
Your scheme must be the framework of the universe ; 
all other schemes will soon be ruins. The perfect 
God in his revelations of himself has never got to the 
length of one such proposition as you, his prophets, 
state. Have you learned the alphabet of heaven, and 
can count three ? Do you know the number of God's 
family ? Can you put mysteries into words ? Do you 
presume to fable of the ineifable? Pray, what geog- 
rapher are you, that speak of heaven's topography? 
Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality ? 
Do you, Miles Howard, think that he has made you 
his confidant? Tell me of the height of the moun- 



66 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

tains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I 
may believe you, but of the secret history of the Al- 
mighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad. Yet we 
have a sort of family history of our God, — so have 
the Tahitians of theirs, — and some old poet's grand 
imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlast- 
ing truth, and God's own word ! 

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though 
I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it 
in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath 
school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the 
yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped 
from their meshes. It was hard to get the commen- 
taries out of one's head, and taste its true flavor. — 
I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon 
which has been preached from this text ; almost all 
other sermons that I have heard or heard of, have 
been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor 
story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ, 
because the book has been edited by Christians. In 
fact, I love this book rarely, though it is a sort of 
castle in the air to me, which I am permitted to dream. 
Having come to it so recently and freshly, it has the 
greater charm, so that I cannot find any to talk with 
about it. I never read a novel, they have so little 
real life and thought in them. The reading which I 
love best is the scriptures of the several nations, though 
it happens that I am better acquainted with those of 
the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the Persians, than of 
the Hebrews, which I have come to last. Give me 
one of these Bibles, and you have silenced me for a 
while. When I recover the use of my tongue, I am 
wont to worry my neighbors with the new sentences, 



SUNDA V. 67 

but commonly they cannot see that there is any wit in 
them. Such has been my experience with the New 
Testament. I have not yet got to the crucifixion, I 
have read it over so many times. I should love 
dearly to read it aloud to my friends, some of whom 
are seriously inclined ; it is so good, and I am sure that 
they have never heard it, it fits their case exactly, and 
we should enjoy it so much together, — but I instinct- 
ively despair of getting their ears. They soon show, 
by signs not to be mistaken, that it is inexpressibly 
wearisome to them. I do not mean to imply that I 
am any better than my neighbors ; for, alas ! I know 
that I am only as good, though I love better books than 
they. It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the uni- 
versal favor with which the New Testament is out- 
wardly received, and even the bigotry with which it 
is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is 
no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it 
deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. 
There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and 
unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and 
Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling block. There 
are, indeed, severe things in it which no man should 
read aloud but once. — "Seek first the kingdom of 
heaven." — "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on 
earth." — "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that 
thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
treasure in heaven." — "For what is a man profited, 
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul? " — Think of this, Yankees! — "Verily I say unto 
you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall 
say unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place ; 
and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible 



68 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

unto you." — Think of repeating these things to a 
New England audience! thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly^ 
till there are three barrels of sermons ! Who, without 
cant, can read them aloud? Who, without cant, can 
hear them, and not go out of the meeting-house? 
They never were read, they never were heard. Let 
but one of these sentences be rightly read from any 
pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one 
stone of that meeting-house upon another. 

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's 
so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too 
constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, 
who am not interested solely in man's religious or 
moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most 
definite designs on the future. Absolutely speaking, 
Do unto others as you would that they should do unto 
you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of cur- 
rent silver. An honest man would have but little 
occasion for it. It is golden not to have any mle at 
all in such a case. The book has never been written 
which is to be accepted without any allowance. Christ 
was a sublime actor on the stage of the world. He 
knew what he was thinking of when he said, " Heaven 
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." I draw near to him at such a time. Yet he 
taught mankind but imperfectly how to live ; his 
thoughts were all directed toward another world. 
There is another kind of success than his. Even 
here we have a sort of living to get, and must buffet 
it somewhat longer. There are various tough prob- 
lems yet to solve, and we must make shift to live, 
betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we 
can. 



SUNDA y. 69 

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood 
chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the 
woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity. 
The New Testament may be a choice book to him 
on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will 
rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The apostles, 
though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race 
of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland 
streams. 

Men have a singular desire to be good without 
being good for anything, because, perchance, they 
think vaguely that so it will be good for them in 
the end. The sort of morality which the priest 
inculcates is a very subtle policy, far finer than the 
politicians, and the world is very successfully ruled 
by them as the policemen. It is not worth the while 
to let our imperfections disturb us always. The con- 
science really does not, and ought not to, monopolize 
the whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the 
head. It is as liable to disease as any other part. I 
have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly 
to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as 
spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. 
They did not know when to swallow their cud, and 
their lives of course yielded no milk. 

Conscience is instinct bred in the house, 

Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin 

By an unnatural breeding in and in. 

I say, Turn it out doors, 

Into the moors. 

I love a life whose plot is simple, 

And does not thicken with every pimple ; 

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, 

That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it. 

I love an earnest soul. 



70 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Whose mighty joy and sorrow 

Are not drowned in a bowl, 

And brought to life to-morrow ; 

That lives one tragedy, 

And not seventy ; 

A conscience worth keeping, 

Laughing not weeping ; 

A conscience wise and steady, 

And forever ready ; 

Not changing with events. 

Dealing in compliments ; 

A conscience exercised about 

Large things, where one 7nay doubt, 

I love a soul not all of wood, 

Predestinated to be good. 

But true to the backbone 

Unto itself alone, 

And false to none ; 

Born to its own affairs, 

Its own joys and own cares ; 

By whom the work which God begun 

Is finished, and not undone ; 

Taken up where he left off, 

Whether to worship or to scoff; 

If not good, why then evil, 

If not good god, good devil. 

Goodness ! — you hypocrite, come out of that, 

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. 

I have no patience towards 

Such conscientious cowards. 

Give me simple laboring folk. 

Who love their work. 

Whose virtue is a song 

To cheer God along. 

I was once reproved by a minister who was driv- 
ing a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds 
among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was 
bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, 
instead of a church, when I would have gone further 



SUNDA Y. 71 

than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any 
day. He declared that I was "breaking the Lord's 
fourth commandment," and proceeded to enumerate, 
in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen 
him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the 
Sabbath. He really thought that a god was at work 
to trip up those men who followed any secular work 
on this day, and did not see that it was the evil con- 
science of the workers that did it. The country is 
full of this superstition, so that when one enters a 
village, the church, not only really but from associa- 
tion, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it 
is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest 
and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as 
these shall ere long cease to deform the landscape. 

If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to let me 
speak in his pulpit on a Sunday, he would object, 
because I do not pray as he does, or because I am 
not ordained. What under the sun are these things ? 

Really, there is no infidelity, now-a-days, so great 
as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and 
rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South 
Pacific preaches a truer doctrine. The church is a 
sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery 
as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken 
into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor's 
Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious 
cripples sitting outside in sunny weather. Let not 
the apprehension that he may one day have to occupy 
a ward therein, discourage the cheerful labors of the 
able-souled man. While he remembers the sick in 
their extremities, let him not look thither as to his 
goal. One is sick at heart of this pagoda worship. 
It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo sub- 



72 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

terranean temple. In dark places and dungeons 
the preach er"'s words might perhaps strike root and 
grow, but not in broad daylight in any part of the 
world that I know. The sound of the Sabbath bell 
far away, now breaking on these shores, does not 
awaken pleasing associations, but melancholy and 
sombre ones rather. One involuntarily rests on his 
oar, to humor his unusually meditative mood. It 
is as the sound of many catechisms and religious 
books twanging a canting peal round the earth, seem- 
ing to issue from some Egyptian temple and echo 
along the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pha- 
raoh's palace and Moses in the bulrushes, startling a 
multitude of storks and alligators basking in the sun. 

Everywhere "good men '^ sound a retreat, and the 
word has gone forth to fall back on innocence. Fall 
forward rather on to whatever there is there. Chris- 
tianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the 
willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. 
It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet wel- 
come the morning with joy. The mother tells her 
falsehoods to her child, but thank Heaven, the child 
does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's 
faith has not grown with her experience. Her experi- 
ence has been too much for her. The lesson of life 
was too hard for her to learn. 

It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers 
feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, 
to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. 
Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than 
never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad 
mistake. In reading a work on agriculture, we have 
to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words 
" Providence " and " He " scattered along the page, 



SUNDA V. 73 

to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. 
What he calls his religion is for the most part offen- 
sive to the nostrils. He should know better than 
expose himself, and keep his foul sores covered till 
they are quite healed. There is more religion in 
men's science than there is science in their religion. 
Let us make haste to the report of the committee on 
swine. 

A man's real faith is never contained in his creed^ 
nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is 
never adopted. This it is tliat permits him to smile 
ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And 
yet he chngs anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, 
thinking that that does him good service because his 
sheet anchor does not drag. 

In most men's religion, the ligature, which should 
be its umbilical cord connecting them with divinity, 
is rather like that thread which the accompHces of 
Cylon held in their hands when they went abroad 
from the temple of Minerva, the other end being 
attached to the statue of the goddess. But fre- 
quently, as in their case, the thread breaks, being 
stretched, and they are left without an asylum. 

" A good and pious man reclined his head on the 
bosom of contemplation, and was absorbed in the 
ocean of a revery. At the instant when he awaked 
from his vision, one of his friends, by way of pleas- 
antry, said : What rare gift have you brought us from 
that garden, where you have been recreating? He 
replied ; I fancied to myself and said, when I can 
reach the rose-bower, I will fill my lap with the flow- 
ers, and bring them as a present to my friends ; but 



74 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

cated me, that the skirt dropped from my hands. — 
' O bird of dawn ! learn the warmth of aiTection from 
the moth ; for that scorched creature gave up the 
ghost, and uttered not a groan : These vain pretend- 
ers are ignorant of him they seek after ; for of him 
that knew him we never heard again : — O thou ! who 
towerest above the fliglits of conjecture, opinion, and 
comprehension ; whatever has been reported of thee 
we have heard and read ; the congregation is dis- 
missed, and life drawn to a close ; and we still rest at 
our first encomium of thee ! ' " — Sadi. 

By noon we were let down into the Merrimack 
through the locks at Middlesex, just above Pawtucket 
Falls, by a serene and liberal-minded man, who came 
quietly from his book, though his duties, we supposed, 
did not require him to open the locks on Sundays. 
With him we had a just and equal encounter of the 
eyes, as between two honest men. 

The movements of the eyes express the perpetual 
and unconscious courtesy of the parties. It is said, 
that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither 
does an honest man look at you as if he had his rep- 
utation to establish. I have seen some who did not 
know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. 
A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser 
than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. 
Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their 
gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, 
that is all. 

The best relations were at once established between 
us and this man, and though few words were spoken, 
he could not conceal a visible interest in us and our 
excursion. He was a lover of the higher mathemat- 



SUNDAY. 75 

ics, as we found, and in the midst of some vast sunny 
problem, when we overtook him and whispered our 
conjectures. By this man we were presented with 
the freedom of the Merrimack. We now felt as if we 
were fairly launched on the ocean-stream of our voy- 
age, and were pleased to find that our boat would 
float on Merrimack water. We began again busily 
to put in practice those old arts of rowing, steering, 
and paddling. It seemed a strange phenomenon to 
us that the two rivers should mingle their waters so 
readily, since we had never associated them in our 
thoughts. 

As we glided over the broad bosom of the Merri- 
mack, between Chelmsford and Dracut, at noon, here 
a quarter of a mile wide, the rattling of our oars was 
echoed over the water to those villages, and their 
slight sounds to us. Their harbors lay as smooth 
and fairy-like as the Lido, or Syracuse, or Rhodes, in 
our imagination, while, like some strange roving craft, 
we flitted past what seemed the dwellings of noble 
home-staying men, seemingly as conspicuous as if on 
an eminence, or floating upon a tide which came up 
to those villagers' breasts. At a third of a mile over 
the water we heard distinctly some children repeat- 
ing their catechism in a cottage near the shore, while 
in the broad shallows between, a herd of cows stood 
lashing their sides, and waging war with the flies. 

Two hundred years ago other catechising than this 
was going on here ; for here came the sachem Wan- 
nalancet, and his people, and sometimes Tahatawan, 
our Concord Sachem, who afterwards had a church 
at home, to catch fish at the falls ; and here also 
came John ElHot, with the Bible and Catechism, and 
Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and other tracts, 



76 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

done into the Massachusetts tongue, and taught them 
Christianity meanwhile. " This place," says Gookin, 
referring to Wamesit, 

" being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, they 
come to fish ; and this good man takes this opportu- 
nity to spread the net of the gospel, to fish for their 
souls." — "May 5th, 1674," he continues, "according 
to our usual custom, Mr. Eliot and myself took our 
journey to Wamesit, or Pawtuckett ; and arriving there 
that evening, Mr. Eliot preached to as many of them 
as could be got together, out of Matt. xxii. 1-14, the 
parable of the marriage of the king's son. We met 
at the wigwam of one called Wannalancet, about 
two miles from the town, near Pawtuckett falls, and 
bordering upon Merrimak river. This person, Wan- 
nalancet, is the eldest son of old Pasaconaway, the 
chiefest sachem of Pawtuckett. He is a sober and 
grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty. 
He hath been always loving and friendly to the Eng- 
lish."" As yet, however, they had not prevailed on 
him to embrace the Christian religion. " But at this 
time," says Gookin, "May 6, 1674," — "after some 
deliberation and serious pause, he stood up, and made 
a speech to this effect : — 'I must acknowledge I have, 
all my days, used to pass in an old canoe, (alluding 
to his frequent custom to pass in a canoe upon the 
river) and now you exhort me to change and leave 
my old canoe, and embark in a new canoe, to which 
I have hitherto been umvilling ; but now I yield up 
myself to your advice, and enter into a new canoe, 
and do engage to pray to God hereafter.' " One "Mr. 
Richard Daniel, a gentleman that lived in Billerica," 
who with other "persons of quality" was present, 



SUNDA V. yy 

"desired brother Eliot to tell the sachem from him, 
that it may be, while he went in his old canoe, he 
passed in a quiet stream ; but the end thereof was 
death and destruction to soul and body. But now he 
went into a new canoe, perhaps he would meet with 
storms and trials, but yet he should be encouraged to 
persevere, for the end of his voyage would be ever- 
lasting rest." — "Since that time, I hear this sachem 
doth persevere, and is a constant and diligent hearer 
of God's word, and sanctifieth the Sabbath, though 
he doth travel to Wamesit meeting every Sabbath, 
which is above two miles ; and though sundry of his 
people have deserted him, since he subjected to the 
gospel, yet he continues and persists." — Gookhi's 
Hist. Coll. of the Indians iii New England, 1674. 

Already, as appears from the records, "At a General 
Court held at Boston in New England, the 7th of the 
first month, 1643-4." — " Wassamequin, Nashoonon, 
Kutchamaquin, Massaconomet, and Squaw Sachem, 
did voluntarily submit themselves " to the English ; 
and among other things did " promise to be willing 
from time to time to be instructed in the knowledge 
of God." Being asked " Not to do any unnecessary 
work on the Sabbath day, especially within the gates 
of Christian towns," they answered, " It is easy to 
them ; they have not much to do on any day, and 
they can well take their rest on that day." — " So," 
says Winthrop, in his Journal, " we causing them to 
understand the articles, and all the ten commandments 
of God, and they freely assenting to all, they were 
solemnly received, and then presented the Court with 
twenty-six fathom more of wampom ; and the Court 
gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, and 
their dinner; and to them and their men, every of 



yd> A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

them, a cup of sack at their departure ; and so they 
took leave and went away." 

What journeying on foot and on horseback through 
the wilderness, to preach the gospel to these minks 
and muskrats! who first, no dOubt, listened with their 
red ears out of a natural hospitality and courtesy, and 
afterward from curiosity or even interest, till at length 
there were "praying Indians," and, as the General 
Court wrote to Cromwell, the " work is brought to 
this perfection, that some of the Indians themselves 
can pray and prophesy in a comfortable manner." 

It was in fact an old battle and hunting ground 
through which we had been floating, the ancient 
dwelling-place of a race of hunters and warriors. 
Their weirs of stone, their arrowheads and hatchets, 
their pestles, and the mortars in which they pounded 
Indian corn before the white man had tasted it, lay 
concealed in the mud of the river bottom. Tradition 
still points out the spots where they took fish in the 
greatest numbers, by such arts as they possessed. 
It is a rapid story the historian will have to put to- 
gether. Miantonimo, — Winthrop, — Webster. Soon 
he comes from Mount Hope to Bunker Hill, from 
bear-skins, parched corn, bows and arrows, to tiled 
roofs, wheat fields, guns and swords. Pawtucket and 
Wamesit, where the Indians resorted in the fishing 
season, are now Lowell, the city of spindles and Man- 
chester of America, which sends its cotton cloth 
round the globe. Even we youthful voyagers had 
spent a part of our lives in the village of Chelmsford, 
when the present city, whose bells we heard, was its 
obscure north district only, and the giant weaver was 
not yet fairly born. So old are we ; so young is it. 



SUNDA V. 79 

We were thus entering the State of New Hamp- 
shire on the bosom of the flood formed by the tribute 
of its innumerable valleys. The river was the only 
key which could unlock its maze, presenting its hills 
and valleys, its lakes and streams, in their natural 
order and position. The Merrimack, or Sturgeon 
River, is formed by the confluence of the Pemigewasset, 
which rises near the Notch of the White Mountains, 
and the Winnepisiogee, which drains the lake of the 
same name, signifying "The Smile of the Great 
Spirit." From their junction it nms south seventy- 
eight miles to Massachusetts, and thence east thirty- 
five miles to the sea. I have traced its stream from 
where it bubbles out of the rocks of the White Moun- 
tains above the clouds, to where it is lost amid the 
salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island beach. At 
first it comes on murmuring to itself by the base of 
stately and retired mountains, through moist primitive 
woods whose juices it receives, where the bear still 
drinks it, and the cabins of settlers are far between, 
and there are few to cross its stream ; enjoying in 
solitude its cascades still unknown to fame ; by long 
ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of Squam, 
slumbering like tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of 
Moosehillock, the Haystack, and Kearsarge reflected 
in its waters ; where the maple and the raspberry, 
those lovers of the hills, flourish amid temperate 
dews; — flowing long and full of meaning, but un- 
translatable as its name Pemigewasset, by many a 
pastured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses 
haunt, tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and receiv- 
ing the tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene. 
There are earth, air, fire, and water, — very well, this 
is water, and down it comes. 



8o A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Such water do the gods distil, 
And pour down every hill 

For their New England men ; 
A draught of this wild nectar bring, 
And I '11 not taste the spring 

Of Helicon again. 

Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by the 
lowest fall. By the law of its birth never to become 
stagnant, for it has come out of the clouds, and down 
the sides of precipices worn in the flood, through 
beaver dams broke loose, not splitting but splicing 
and mending itself, until it found a breathing place in 
this low land. There is no danger now that the sun 
will steal it back to heaven again before it reach the 
sea, for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews 
into its bosom again with interest at every eve. 

It was already the water of Squam and Newfound 
Lake and Winnepisiogee, and White Mountain snow 
dissolved, on which we were floating, and Smith's 
and Baker's and Mad rivers, and Nashua and Souhe- 
gan and Piscataquoag, and Suncook and Soucook and 
Contoocook, mingled in incalculable proportions, still 
fluid, yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, ineradi- 
cable inclination to the sea. 

So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, at 
which last place it first suffers a sea change, and a few 
masts betray the vicinity of the ocean. Between the 
towns of Amesbury and Newbury it is a broad com- 
mercial river, from a third to half a mile in width, no 
longer skirted with yellow and crumbling banks, but 
backed by high green hills and pastures, with frequent 
white beaches on which the fishermen draw up their 
nets. I have passed down this portion of the river in 
a steam-boat, and it was a pleasant sight to watch 



SUNDAY, 8 1 

from its deck the fishermen dragging their seines on 
the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign strand. 
At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with 
lumber, standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at 
anchor or aground, waiting for wind or tide ; until, at 
last, you glide under the famous Chain Bridge, and 
are landed at Newburyport. Thus she who at first 
was ^'poore of waters, naked of renowne," having 
received so many fair tributaries, as was said of the 
Forth, 

" Doth grow the greater still, the further downe ; 
Till that abounding both in power and fame, 
She long doth strive to give the sea her name ; " 

or if not her name, in this case, at least the impulse 
of her stream. From the steeples of Newburyport, 
you may review this river stretching far up into the 
country, with many a white sail glancing over it like 
an inland sea, and behold, as one wrote who was born 
on its head-waters, " Down out at its mouth, the dark 
inky main blending with the blue above. Plum 
Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon 
like the sea serpent, and the distant outline broken 
by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky." 

Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the 
Merrimack reaches the sea by a course only half as 
long, and hence has no leisure to form broad and 
fertile meadows like the former, but is huriied along 
rapids, and down numerous falls without long delay. 
The banks are generally steep and high, with a narrow 
interval reaching back to the hills, which is only oc- 
casionally and partially overflown at present, and is 
much valued by the farmers. Between Chelmsford 
and Concord in New Hampshire, it varies from twenty 



82 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

to seventy-five rods in width. It is probably wider 
than it was formerly, in many places, owing to the 
trees having been cut down, and the consequent wasting 
away of its banks. The influence of the Pawtucket 
dam is felt as far up as CromwelPs Falls, and many 
think that the banks are being abraded and the river 
filled up again by this cause. Like all our rivers, it is 
liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been 
known to rise twenty-five feet in a few hours. It 
is navigable for vessels of burden about twenty 
miles, for canal boats by means of locks as far as 
Concord in New Hampshire, about seventy-five miles 
from its mouth, and for smaller boats to Plymouth, 
one hundred and thirteen miles. A small steam-boat 
once plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the 
railroad was built, and one now runs from Newbury- 
port to Haverhill. 

Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of com- 
merce by the sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river 
was devoted from the first to the service of manu- 
factures. Issuing from the iron region of Franconia, 
and flowing through still uncut forests, by inexhausti- 
ble ledges of granite, with Squam, and Winnepisiogee, 
and Newfound, and Massabesic lakes for its mill- 
ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where 
it has been offering its privileges in vain for ages, 
until at last the Yankee race came to ifuprove them. 
Standing here at its mouth, look up its sparkling 
stream to its source, — a silver cascade which falls all 
the way from the White Mountains to the sea, — and 
behold a city on each successive plateau, a busy col- 
ony of human beaver around every fall. Not to men- 
tion Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence, and 
Lowell, and Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord, 



SUNDA V. 83 

gleaming one above the other. When at length it 
has escaped from under the last of the factories it has 
a level and unmolested passage to the sea, a mere 
was/e ivater, as it were, bearing little with it but its 
fame; its pleasant course revealed by the morning 
fog which hangs over it, and the sails of the few small 
vessels which transact the commerce of Haverhill and 
Newburyport. But its real vessels are railroad cars, 
and its true and main stream, flowing by an iron chan- 
nel further south, may be traced by a long line of 
vapor amid the hills, which no morning wind ever 
disperses, to where it empties into the sea at Boston. 
This side is the louder murmur now. Instead of the 
scream of a fish-hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the 
whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its 
progress. 

This river too was at length discovered by the white 
man, " trending up into the land," he knew not how 
far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea. Its valley, 
as far as the Winnepisiogee, was first surveyed in 
1652. The first settlers of Massachusetts supposed 
that the Connecticut, in one part of its course, ran 
north-west, "so near the great lake as the Indians 
do pass their canoes into it over land. " From which 
lake and the " hideous swamps " about it, as they sup- 
posed, came all the beaver that was traded between 
Virginia and Canada, — and the Potomac was thought 
to come out of or from very near it. Afterward the 
Connecticut came so near the course of the Merri- 
mack, that with a little pains they expected to divert 
the current of the trade into the latter river, and its 
profits from their Dutch neighbors into their own 
pockets. 



84 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead 
but a living stream, though it has less life within its 
waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, 
in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no 
weeds, and, comparatively, few fishes. We looked 
down into its yellow water with the more curiosity, 
who were accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of 
the former river. Shad and alewives are taken here 
in their season, but salmon, though at one time more 
numerous than shad, are now more rare. Bass, also^ 
are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have 
proved more or less destructive to the fisheries. The 
shad make their appearance early in May, at the same 
time with the blossoms of the pyrus, one of the most 
conspicuous early flowers, which is for this reason 
called the shad-blossom. An insect, called the shad- 
fly, also appears at the same time, covering the houses 
and fences. We are told that "their greatest run is 
when the apple trees are in full blossom. The old 
shad return in August ; the young, three or four inches 
long, in September. These are very fond of fl.ies." 
A rather picturesque and luxurious mode of fishing 
was formerly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows 
Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. '■'• On 
the steep sides of the island rock," says Belknap, 
" hang several arm chairs, fastened to ladders, and 
secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen sit to 
catch salmon and shad with dipping nets." The 
remains of Indian weirs, made of large stones, are 
still to be seen in the Winnepisiogee, one of the 
head-waters of this river. 

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to 
be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of 
salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, 



SUNDAY. 85 

which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast 
in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales 
gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry, which 
in still greater numbers wend their way downward 
to the sea. <• And is it not pretty sport," wrote Capt. 
John Smith, who was on this coast as eariy as 1614, 
" to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as 
fast as you can haul and veer a line ? " — " And what 
sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less 
hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and cross- 
ing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent 
streams of a calm sea." 

On the sandy shore, opposite the Glass-house vil- 
lage in Chelmsford, at the Great Bend, where we 
landed to rest us and gather a few wild plums, we 
discovered the ca7npanula rotwidifolia, a new flower 
to us, the harebell of the poets, which is common to 
both hemispheres, growing close to the water. Here, 
in the shady branches of an apple tree on the sand^ 
we took our nooning, where there was not a zephyr 
to disturb the repose of this glorious Sabbath day, 
and we reflected serenely on the long past and suc- 
cessful labors of Latona. 

" So silent is the cessile air, 
That every cry and call, 
The hills and dales, and forest fair. 
Again repeats them all. 

"The herds beneath some leafy trees, 
Amidst the flowers they lie, 
The stable ships upon the seas 
Tend up their sails to dry," 

As we thus rested in the shade, or rowed leisurely 
along, we had recourse, from time to time, to the 



86 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Gazetteer, which was our Navigator, and from its 
bald natural facts extracted the pleasure of poetry. 
Beaver river comes in a little lower down, draining the 
meadows ofPelham, Windham, and Londonderry. The 
Scotch-Irish settlers of the latter town, according to 
this authority, were the first to introduce the potato into 
New England, as well as the manufacture of linen cloth. 
Everything that is printed and bound in a book 
contains softie echo at least of the best that is in 
literature. Indeed, the best books have a use like 
sticks and stones, which is above or beside their 
design, not anticipated in the preface, nor concluded 
in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very 
different use to me to-day from what it did to his 
contemporaries. It has often an acquired and acci- 
dental value merely, proving that man is still man 
in the world. It is pleasant to meet with such still 
lines as, 

" Jam laeto turgent in palmite gemmae ; " 
Now the buds swell on the joyful stem ; 

or 

" Strata jacent passim sua quaeque sub arbore poma." 
The apples lie scattered everywhere, each under its tree. 

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition 
of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences 
as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is 
no small recommendation when a book will stand the 
test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight. 

What would we not give for some great poem to 
read now, which would be in harmony with the 
scenery, — for if men read aright, methinks they 
would never read anything but poems. No history 
nor philosophy can supply their place. 



SUNDA Y. Sy 

The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly 
prove false by setting aside its requisitions. We can, 
therefore, publish only our advertisement of it. 

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom 
is either rhymed, or in some way musically measured, 
— is, in form as well as substance, poetry ; and a 
volume which should contain the condensed wisdom 
of mankind, need not have one rhythmless line. 

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a 
natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, 
and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken 
or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, 
for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. 
What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, the Baby- 
lonians, the Egyptians done, that can be told ? It is 
the simplest relation of phenomena, and describes the 
commonest sensations with more truth than science 
does, and the latter at a distance slowly mimics its 
style and methods. The poet sings how the blood 
flows in his veins. He performs his functions, and is 
so well that he needs such stimulus to sing only as 
plants to put forth leaves and blossoms. He would 
strive in vain to modulate the remote and transient 
music which he sometimes hears, since his song is 
a vital function like breathing, and an integral result 
like weight. It is not the overflowing of life but of 
its subsidence rather, and is drawn from under the 
feet of the poet. It is enough if Homer but say the 
sun sets. He is as serene as nature, and we can 
hardly detect the enthusiasm of the bard. It is as 
if nature spoke. He presents to us the simplest 
pictures of human life, so that childhood itself can 
understand them, and the man must not think twice 
to appreciate his naturalness. Each reader discovers 



SS A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

for himself, that, with respect to the simpler features 
of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than 
copy his similes. His more memorable passages are 
as naturally bright, as gleams of sunshine in misty 
weather. Nature furnishes him not only with words, 
but with stereotyped lines and sentences from her 
mint. 

"As from the clouds appears the full moon, 
All shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds, 
So Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost, 
And at another in the rear, commanding ; and all with brass 
He shone, Hke to the lightning of aegis-bearing Zeus." 

He conveys the least information, even the hour of 
the day, with such magnificence and vast expense of 
natural imagery, as if it were a message from the gods. 

" While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing. 
For that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people 

fell; 
But when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal, 
In the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands 
With cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind. 
And the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts ; 
Then the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes. 
Shouting to their companions from rank to rank." 

When the army of the Trojans passed the night 
under arms, keeping watch lest the enemy should 
re-embark under cover of the dark, 

" They, thinking great things, upon the neutral ground of war 
Sat all the night ; and many fires burned for them. 
As when in the heavens the stars round the bright moon 
Appear beautiful, and the air is without wind ; 
And all the heights, and the extreme summits. 
And the wooded sides of the mountains appear ; and from the 
heavens an infinite ether is diffused, 



SUNDA Y. 89 

And all the stars are seen ; and the shepherd rejoices in his 

heart ; 
So between the ships and the streams of Xanthus 
Appeared the fires of the Trojans before Ilium, 
A thousand fires burned on the plain ; and by each 
Sat fifty, in the light of the blazing fire ; 
And horses eating white barley and corn, 
Standing by the chariots, awaited fair-throned Aurora." 

The "white-armed goddess Juno," sent by the 
Father of gods and men for Iris and Apollo, 

" Went down the Idsean mountains to far Olympus, 
As when the mind of a man, who has come over much earth, 
Sallies forth, and he reflects with rapid thoughts, 
There was I, and there, and remembers many things; 
So swiftly the august Juno hastening flew through the air, 
And came to high Olympus." 

His scenery is always true, and not invented. He 
does not leap in imagination from Asia to Greece, 
through mid air, 

irreLT] /xd\a ttoWo, fxera^v 

Ovped re crKLO^vra, daXdacra re rjxve<T(7a. 

for there are very many 

Shady mountains and resounding seas between. 

If his messengers repair but to the tent of Achilles, 
we do not wonder how they got there, but accompany 
them step by step along the shore of the resounding 
sea. Nestor's account of the march of the Pylians 
against the Epeians is extremely lifelike. — 

" Then rose up to them sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator 
of the Pylians, 
And words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue." 

This time, however, he addresses Patroclus alone. 
— "A certain river, Minyas by name, leaps seaward 



90 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

near to Arene, where we Pylians wait the dawn, both 
horse and foot. Thence with all haste we sped as on 
the morrow ere 't was noon-day, accoutred for the fight, 
even to Alpheus' sacred source, &c." We fancy that 
we hear the subdued murmuring of the Minyas dis- 
charging its waters into the main the live-long night, 
and the hollow sound of the waves breaking on the 
shore, — until at length we are cheered at the close 
of a toilsome march by the gurgling fountains of 
Alpheus. 

There are few books which are fit to be remembered 
in our wisest hours, but the Iliad is brightest in the 
serenest days, and embodies still all the sunlight that 
fell on Asia Minor. No modern joy or ecstasy of ours 
can lower its height, or dim its lustre, but there it lies 
in the east of literature, as it were the earliest and 
latest production of the mind. The ruins of Egypt 
oppress and stifle us with their dust, foulness pre- 
served in cassia and pitch, and swathed in linen ; 
the death of that which never lived. But the rays 
of Greek poetry struggle down to us, and mingle 
with the sunbeams of the recent day. The statue 
of Memnon is cast down, but the shaft of the Iliad 
still meets the sun in his rising. — 

" Homer is gone ; and where is Jove ? and where 
The rival cities seven ? His song outlives 
Time, tower, and god, — all that then was save Heaven." 

So too, no doubt. Homer had his Homer, and 
Orpheus his Orpheus, in the dim antiquity which 
preceded them. The mythological system of the 
ancients, and it is still the mythology of the moderns, 
the poem of mankind, interwoven so wonderfully with 
their astronomy, and matching in grandeur and har- 



SUNDAY. 91 

mony the architecture of the heavens themselves, 
seems to point to a time when a mightier genius in- 
habited the earth. But after all, man is the great 
poet, and not Homer or Shakspeare ; and our lan- 
guage itself, and the common arts of life are his 
work. Poetry is so universally tme and independent 
of experience, that it does not need any particular 
biography to illustrate it, but we refer it sooner or 
later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after ages to the 
genius of humanity, and the gods themselves. 

It would be worth the while to select our reading, 
for books are the society we keep ; to read only the 
serenely true ; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, 
nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, 
and when they failed, read them again, or perchance 
write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer 
up our perfect (reA-eta) thoughts to the gods daily, in 
hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at 
least once a day. The whole of the day should not 
be day-time ; there should be one hour, if no more, 
which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont 
to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is 
it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the 
thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of 
the Russians and the Chinese, or even French phi- 
losophy and much of German criticism. Read the 
best books first, or you may not have a chance to read 
them at all. "There are the worshippers with offer- 
ings, and the worshippers with mortifications ; and 
again the worshippers with enthusiastic devotion ; so 
there are those, the wisdom of whose reading is their 
worship, men of subdued passions, and severe man- 
ners : — This world is not for him who doth not 



92 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

worship ; and where, O Arjoon, is there another ? " 
Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and enter- 
tained always like children. He who resorts to the 
easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than 
if he took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts 
can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side 
whence they arrive. Books, not which afford us a 
cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is 
of unusual daring ; such as an idle man cannot read, 
and a timid one would not be entertained by, which 
even make us dangerous to existing institutions, — 
such call I good books. 

All that are printed and bound are not books ; they 
do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to 
be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of 
civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thou- 
sand disguises. " The way to trade," as a pedler once 
told me, " is to put it right t/iroiigh,'''' no matter what 
it is, anything that is agreed on. — 

" You grov'ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades 
Where light ne'er shot his golden ray." 

By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cun- 
ningly compiled, and have their run and success even 
among the learned, as if they were the result of a new 
man's thinking, and their birth were attended with 
some natural throes. But in a little while their covers 
fall off, for no binding will avail, and it appears that 
they are not Books or Bibles at all. There are new 
and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to 
be for the elevation of the race, which many a pure 
scholar and genius who has learned to read is for a 
moment deceived by, and finds himself reading a 
horse-rake, or spinning jenny, or wooden nutmeg, 



SUNDA Y. 93 

or oak-leaf cigar, or steam-power press, or kitchen 
range, perchance, when he was seeking serene and 
biblical truths. — 

" Merchants, arise, 
And mingle conscience with your merchandise." 

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one 
book before they write another. Instead of cultivat- 
ing the earth for wheat and potatoes, they cultivate 
literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. 
Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others 
actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy. 
Books are for the most part wilfully and hastily written, 
as parts of a system, to supply a want real or imagined! 
Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty 
schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some 
clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view 
of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular 
method of studying nature, and make haste to con- 
duct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma 
where the professors always dwell.— 

" To Athens gown'd he goes, and from that school 
Returns unsped, a more instructed fool." 

They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of 
knowledge, for to speak deliberately and in view 
of the highest truths, it is not easy to distinguish 
elementary knowledge. There is a chasm between 
knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science 
can never span. A book should contain pure dis- 
coveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by ship- 
wrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by 
those who have never been out of sight of land. 
They must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must 



94 A WEEK ON THE CO AT CORD RIVER. 

themselves be the unconstrained and natural harvest 
of their author's lives. — 

" What I have learned is mine ; I 've had my thought, 
And me the Muses noble truths have taught." 

We do not learn much from learned books, but 
from true, sincere, human books, from frank and 
honest biographies. The life of a good man will 
hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, 
for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringe- 
ment as in the observance, and our lives are sustained 
by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. 
The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, 
wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes 
sap and performs the functions of health. If we 
choose, we may study the alburnum only. The 
gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling. 

At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse- 
rake or a kitchen range which is not cracked. Let 
not the poet shed tears only for the public weal. 
He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap 
enough to maintain his own verdure, beside what runs 
into the troughs, and not like a vine, which being cut 
in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the 
endeavor to heal its wounds. The poet is he that 
hath fat enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his 
claws all winter. He hibernates in this world, and 
feeds on his own marrow. It is pleasant to think in 
winter, as we walk over the snowy pastures, of those 
happy dreamers that lie under the sod, of dormice and 
all that race of dormant creatures, which have such 
a superfluity of life enveloped in thick folds of fur, 
impervious to cold. Alas, the poet too is, in one 
sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters 



SUNDA Y. 95 

of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surround- 
ing circumstances ; his words are the relation of his 
oldest and finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the 
remotest experience. Other men lead. a starved ex- 
istence, meanwhile, like hawks, that would fain keep 
on the wing, and trust to pick up a sparrow now and 
then. 

There are already essays and poems, the growth 
of this land, which are not in vain, all which, how- 
ever, we could conveniently have stowed in the till 
of our chest. If the gods permitted their own in- 
spiration to be breathed in vain, these might be over- 
looked in the crowd, but the accents of truth are 
as sure to be heard at last on earth as in heaven. 
They already seem ancient, and in some measure have 
lost the traces of their modern birth. Here are they 
who 

" ask for that which is our whole life's light, 

For the perpetual, true, and clear insight." 

I remember a few sentences which spring like the 
sward in its native pasture, where its roots were never 
disturbed, and not as if spread over a sandy embank- 
ment ; answering to the poet's prayer, 

" Let us set so just 
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust 
The poet's sentence, and not still aver 
Each art is to itself a flatterer." 

But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent 
the peaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new 
era will be dated to New England, as from the games 
of Greece. For if Herodotus carried his history to 



96 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Olympia to read, after the cestus and the race, have 
we not heard such histories recited there, which since 
our countrymen have read, as made Greece sometimes 
to be forgotten? — Philosophy, too, has there her grove 
and portico, not wholly unfrequented in these days. 

Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has 
won another palm, contending with 

" Olympian bards who sung 
Divine ideas below, 
Which always find us young, 
And always keep us so. " — 

What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' 
spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent 
eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits un- 
wonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, 
and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile 
flow back and hide his head ! — 

That Phaeton of our day, 

Who 'd make another milky way, 

And burn the world up with his ray ; 

By us an undisputed seer, — 

Who 'd drive his flaming car so near 

Unto our shuddering mortal sphere, 

Disgracing all our slender worth, 
And scorching up the living earth, 
To prove his heavenly birth. 

The silver spokes, the golden tire, 
Are glowing with imwonted fire. 
And ever nigher roll and nigher ; 

The pins and axle melted are. 

The silver radii fly afar. 

Ah, he will spoil his Father's car! 



SUNDA V. 97 

Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer? 
Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year. 
And we shall Ethiops all appear. 

From /lis 

" lips of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle." 

And yet, sometimes, 

We should not mind if on our ear there fell 
Some less of cunning, more of oracle. 

It is Apollo shining in your face. O rare Contempo- 
rary, let us have far off heats. Give us the subtler, 
the heavenlier though fleeting beauty, which passes 
through and through, and dwells not in the verse ; 
even pure water, which but reflects those tints which 
wine wears in its grain. Let epic trade-winds blow, 
and cease this waltz of inspirations. Let us oftener 
feel even the gentle south-west wind upon our cheeks 
blowing from the Indian's heaven. What though 
we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if skyey 
depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulse remain ? 
What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the 
oracle, if we may have instead some natural acres 
of Ionian earth? 

Though we know well, 

" That 't is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise 
A spirit for verse that is not born thereto, 
Nor are they born in every prince's days ; " 

yet spite of all they sang in praise of their " Eliza's 
reign," we have evidence that poets may be born and 
sing in 02^r day, in the presidency of James K. Polk, 

"And that the utmost powers of English rhyme," 
Were not " within /ler peaceful reign confined." 



98 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

The prophecy of Samuel Daniel is already how much 
more than fulfilled ! 

"And who in time knows whither we may vent 
The treasure of our tongue ? To what strange shores 
This gain of our best glory shall be sent, 
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? 
What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident, 
May come refined with the accents that are ours." 

Enough has been said in these days of the charm 
of fluent writing. We hear it complained of some 
works of genius, that they have fine thoughts, but are 
irregular and have no flow. But even the mountain 
peaks in the horizon are, to the eye of science, parts 
of one range. We should consider that the flow of 
thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, 
and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any 
declivity in its channel. The river flows because it 
runs down hill, and descends the faster as it flows 
more rapidly. The reader who expects to float down 
stream for the whole voyage, may well complain of 
nauseating swells and choppings of the sea when his 
frail shore-craft gets amidst the billows of the ocean 
stream, which flows as much to sun and moon as 
lesser streams to it. But if we would appreciate the 
flow that is in these books, we must expect to feel it 
rise from the page like an exhalation, and wash away 
our critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to 
higher levels above and behind ourselves. There is 
many a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows 
as glibly as a mill stream sucking under a causeway ; 
and when their authors are in the full tide of their 
discourse, Pythagoras, and Plato, and Jamblichus, 
halt beside them. Their long stringy slimy sentences 
are of that consistency that they naturally flow and 



SUNDA V. 99 

run together. They read as if written for military 
men, for men of business, there is such a despatch in 
them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers and 
philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling 
clothes off; they are slower than a Roman army in 
its march, the rear camping to-night where the van 
camped last night. The wise Jamblichus eddies and 
gleams like a watery slough. 

" How many thousand, never heard the name 
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books? 
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame. 

And seem to bear down all the world with looks." 

The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Fonvard ! 
Alamo and Fanning! and after rolls the tide of war. 
The very walls and fences seem to travel. But the 
most rapid trot is no flow after all, — and thither you 
and I, at least, reader, will not follow. 

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely 
rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fra- 
grance of the thought ; as if we could be satisfied with 
the dews of the morning or evening without their 
colors, or the heavens without their azure. The most 
attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but 
the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and 
conclusively, as if the speaker had a right to know 
what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been 
well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be 
studied if only for the excellence of his style, for he 
is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. 
There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man's 
tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, 
which the best of modern writing does not furnish. 
His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like 



LofC. 



100 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

a western forest, where the larger growth keeps 
down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback 
through the openings. All the distinguished writers 
of that period, possess a greater vigor and natural- 
ness than the more modern, — for it is allowed to 
slander our own time, — and when we read a quo- 
tation from one of them in the midst of a modern 
author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a 
greener ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. 
It is as if a green bough were laid across the page, 
and we are refreshed as by the sight of fresh grass in 
mid-winter or early spring. You have constantly the 
warrant of life and experience in what you read. 
The little that is said is eked out by implication of 
the much that was done. The sentences are verdur- 
ous and blooming as evergreen and flowers, because 
they are rooted in fact and experience, but our false 
and florid sentences have only the tints of flowers 
without their sap or roots. All men are really most 
attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even 
write in a florid style in imitation of this. They pre- 
fer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of 
its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the episto- 
lary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller 
Botta, because of '• the difficulty of understanding it ; 
there was," he saidj "but one person at Jidda, who 
was capable of understanding and explaining the 
Pasha's correspondence." A man's whole life is 
taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result. 
Every sentence is the result of a long probation. 
Where shall we look for standard English, but to the 
words of a standard man ? The word which is best 
said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is 
cousin to a deed which the speaker could have better 



SUNDA V. lOI 

done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a 
deed by some urgent necessity, even by some misfor- 
tune, so that the truest writer will be some captive 
knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a 
design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the 
substance of life and experience, they made him a fast 
prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his 
deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis 
and sincerity of his action. 

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning 
greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly 
serve. We are amused to read how Ben Jonson en- 
gaged, that the dull masks with which the royal fam- 
ily and nobility were to be entertained, should be 
" grounded upon antiquity and solid learning.'' Can 
there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? 
Learn to split wood, at least. The necessity of labor 
and conversation with many men and things, to the 
scholar is rarely well remembered ; steady labor with 
the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is un- 
questionably the best method of removing palaver 
and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speak- 
ing and writing. If he has worked hard from morn- 
ing till night, though he may have grieved that he 
could not be watching the train of his thoughts during 
that time, yet the few hasty lines which at evening 
record his day's experience will be more musical and 
true than his freest but idle fancy could have furnished. 
Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, 
and such therefore must be his own discipline. He 
will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut 
and cord before night-fall in the short days of winter ; 
but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly 
through the wood ; and so will the strokes of that 



102 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

scholar's pen, which at evening record the story of 
the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the 
reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died 
away. The scholar may be sure that he writes the 
tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They 
give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind 
never makes a great and successful effort without a 
corresponding energy of the body. We are often 
struck by the force and precision of style to which 
hard-working men, unpractised in writing, easily at- 
tain, when required to make the effort. As if plain- 
ness, and vigor, and sincerity, the ornaments of style, 
were better learned on the farm and in the workshop 
than in the schools. The sentences written by such 
rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened 
thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the 
pine. As for the graces of expression, a great thought 
is never found in a mean dress ; but though it proceed 
from the lips of the Woloffs, the nine Muses and the 
three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit 
phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and 
its implied wit can endow a college. The scholar 
might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis 
of the farmer's call to his team, and confess that 
if that were written it would surpass his labored 
sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences? 
From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician 
and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the de- 
scription of work, the simple record of the month's 
labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and 
spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had 
he held a plow instead of a pen, could have drawn a 
furrow deep and straight to the end. The scholar 
requires hard and serious labor to give an impetus to 



SUNDAY. 103 

his thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly 
so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe 
or a sword. When we consider the weak and nerve- 
less periods of some literary men, who perchance in 
feet and inches come up to the standard of their race, 
and are not deficient in girth also, we are amazed at 
the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. What! 
these proportions, — these bones, — and this their 
work! Hands which could have felled an ox have 
hewed this fragile matter which would not have tasked 
a lady's fingers! Can this be a stalwart man's work, 
who has a marrow in his back and a tendon Achilles 
in his heel.? They who set up the blocks of Stone- 
henge did somewhat, if they only laid out their strength 
for once, and stretched themselves. 

Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will not 
crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task 
surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure, and 
then do but what he loves best. He is anxious only 
about the fruitful kernels of time. Though the hen 
should sit all day, she could lay only one ^gg, and, 
besides, would not have picked up materials for an- 
other. Let a man take time enough for the most 
trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. 
The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or con- 
fusion, as if the short spring days were an eternity. — 

Then spend an age in whetting thy desire, 
Thou need'st not hasten if thou dost stand fast. 

Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, 
but for resolves to draw breath in. We do not 
directly go about the execution of the purpose that 
thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble 
with prepared mind, as if the half were already done. 



104 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth 
then, as seeds first send a shoot downward which is 
fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upward 
to the light. 

There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in 
some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks 
cheap enough. There may be nothing lofty in the 
sentiment, or fine in the expression, but it is careless 
country talk. Homeliness is almost as great a merit 
in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide 
there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. 
Some have this merit only. The scholar is not apt 
to make his most familiar experience come gracefully 
to the aid of his expression. Very few men can 
speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They 
overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer 
no favor. They do not speak a good word for her. 
Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more 
nature out of them by pinching than by address- 
ing them. The surliness with which the wood- 
chopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indif- 
ferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed 
enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the 
primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and 
nothing more, than that it be something less. Aubrey 
relates of Thomas Fuller that his was " a very work- 
ing head, insomuch that, walking and meditating 
before dinner, he would eat up a penny loaf, not 
knowing that he did it. His natural memory was 
very great, to which he added the art of memory. 
He would repeat to you forwards and backwards all 
the signs from Ludgate to Charing-cross." He says 
of Mr. John Hales, that ^' He loved Canarie," and 



SUNDA Y. 105 

was buried " under an altar monument of black mar- 
ble with a too long epitaph ; " of Edmund 

Halley, that he, "■ at sixteen could make a dial, and 
then, he said, he thought himself a brave fellow ; " of 
William Holder, who wrote a book upon his curing 
one Popham who was deaf and dumb, '' he was be- 
holding to no author; did only consult with nature." 
For the most part, an author consults only with all 
who have written before him upon a subject, and his 
book is but the advice of so many. But a good book 
will never have been forestalled, but the topic itself 
will in one sense be new, and its author, by consult- 
ing with nature, will consult not only with those who 
have gone before, but with those who may come after. 
There is always room and occasion enough for a true 
book on any subject ; as there is room for more light 
the brightest day and more rays will not interfere 
with the first. 

We thus worked our way up this river, gradually 
adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from 
its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, 
and as it were with increasing confidence, finding 
nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us ; 
not following any beaten path, but the windings of the 
river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately we 
had no business in this country. The Concord had 
rarely been a river or riviis, but barely ^//t^/z/j-, or be- 
t\vQQ.nfl2ivi7is and lac2is. This Merrimack was neither 
rhnis nor fluviiis nor laais, but rather aimiis here, a 
gently swelling and stately rolling flood approaching 
the sea. We could even sympathize with its buoy- 
ant tide, going to seek its fortune in the ocean, and 
anticipating the time when "being received within 



I06 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

the plain of its freer water," it should " beat the shores 
for banks/' — 

" campoque recepta 
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant." 

At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rab- 
bit Island, subjected alternately to the sun and to the 
waves, as desolate as if it lay some leagues within the 
icy sea, and found ourselves in a narrower part of 
the river, near the sheds and yards for picking the 
stone known as the Chelmsford granite, which is 
quarried in Chelmsford and the neighboring towns. 
We passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy 
acres or more, on our right between Chelmsford and 
Tyngsboro\ This was a favorite residence of the 
Indians. According to the History of Dunstable, 
"About 1663, the eldest son of Passaconaway [Chief 
of the Penacooks] was thrown into jail for a debt of 
£/^c„ due to John Tinker, by one of his tribe, and 
which he had promised verbally should be paid. To 
relieve him from his imprisonment, his brother Wan- 
nalancet and others, who owned Wicasuck Island, 
sold it and paid the debt." It was, however, restored 
to the Indians by the General Court in 1665. After 
the departure of the Indians in 1683, it was granted 
to Jonathan Tyng in payment for his services to the 
colony, in maintaining a garrison at his house. Tyng's 
house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Gookin, 
who, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, 
apologizes for presenting his " matter clothed in a 
wilderness dress," says that on the breaking out of 
Philip's war in 1675, there were taken up by the 
Christian Indians and the English in Marlborough, 
and sent to Cambridge, seven "Indians belonging to 
Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who had all 



SUNDA Y. 107 

been at work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jona- 
than Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River ; and 
hearing of the war, they reckoned with their master, 
and getting their wages, conveyed themselves away 
without his privity, and being afraid, marched secretly 
through the woods, designing to go to their own 
country." However, they were released soon after. 
Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng was 
the first permanent settler of Dunstable, which then 
embraced what is now Tyngsboro^ and many other 
towns. In the winter of 1675, in Philip's war, every 
other settler left the town, but " he," says the historian 
of Dunstable, " fortified his house ; and although 
' obliged to send to Boston for his food,' sat himself 
down in the midst of his savage enemies, alone, in the 
wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming his position 
an important one for the defence of the frontiers, in 
Feb. 1676, he petitioned the Colony for aid," humbly 
showing, as his petition runs, that as he lived " in the 
uppermost house on Merrimac River, lying open to ye 
enemy, yet being so seated that it is, as it were, a 
watchhouse to the neighboring towns," he could 
render important service to his country if only he had 
some assistance, " there being," he said, " never an 
inhabitant left in the town but myself." Wherefore he 
requests that their " Honors would be pleased to order 
him three or fotir men to help garrison his said 
house," which they did. But methinks that such a 
garrison would be weakened by the addition of a 



" Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief, 
Make courage for Ufe, to be capitain chief; 
Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin, 
Make gunstone and arrow shew who is within." 



I08 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In 
1694 a law was passed " that every settler who deserted 
a town for fear of the Indians, should forfeit all his 
rights therein.'' But now, at any rate, as I have fre- 
quently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier 
territories of truth and justice, which are the State's 
best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, with- 
out forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, 
townships are granted to deserters, and the General 
Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but 
a deserters' camp itself. 

As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck 
Island, which was then covered with wood, in order to 
avoid the current, two men, who looked as if they had 
just run out of Lowell, where they had been waylaid 
by the Sabbath, meaning to go to Nashua, and who 
now found themselves in the strange, natural, unculti- 
vated and unsettled part of the globe which intervenes, 
full of walls and barriers, a rough and uncivil place to 
them, seeing our boat moving so smoothly up the 
stream, called out from the high bank above our 
heads to know if we would take them as passengers, 
as if this were the street they had missed ; that they 
might sit and chat and drive away the time, and so at 
last find themselves in Nashua. This smooth way 
they much preferred. But our boat was crowded with 
necessary furniture, and sunk low in the water, 
and moreover required to be worked, for even 
// did not progress against the stream without 
effort ; so we were obliged to deny them passage. 
As we glided away with even sweeps, while the fates 
scattered oil in our course, the sun now sinking 
behind the alders on the distant shore, we could still 
see them far off over the water, running along the 



SUNDAY. 109 

shore and climbing over the rocks and fallen trees like 
insects, — for they did not know any better than we 
that they were on an island, — the unsympathizing 
river ever flowing in an opposite direction ; until, hav- 
ing reached the entrance of the Island Brook, which 
they had probably crossed upon the locks below, they 
found a more effectual barrier to their progress. 
They seemed to be learning much in a little time. 
They ran about like ants on a burning brand, and 
once more they tried the river here, and once more 
there, to see if water still indeed was not to be walked 
on, as if a new thought inspired them, and by some 
peculiar disposition of the limbs they could accomplish 
it. At length sober common sense seemed to have 
resumed its sway, and they concluded that what they 
had so long heard must be true, and resolved to ford 
the shallower stream. When nearly a mile distant 
we could see them stripping off their clothes and pre- 
paring for this experiment ; yet it seemed likely that 
a new dilemma would arise, they were so thoughtlessly 
throwing away their clothes on the wrong side of the 
stream, as in the case of the countryman with his 
corn, his fox, and his goose, which had to be trans- 
ported one at a time. Whether they got safely 
through, or v/ent round by the locks we never learned. 
We could not help being struck by the seeming, 
though innocent indifference of Nature to these men's 
necessities, vv'hile elsewhere she was equally serving 
others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her 
service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest 
merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to 
pilgrim's shifts and soon comes to staff and scrip and 
scallop shell. 

We, too, who held the middle of the stream, came 



no A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

near experiencing a pilgrim's fate, being tempted to 
pursue what seemed a sturgeon or larger fish, for we 
remembered that this was the Sturgeon river, its dark 
and monstrous back alternately rising and sinking in 
mid-stream. We kept falling behind, but the fish kept 
his back well out, and did not dive, and seemed to 
prefer to swim against the stream, so, at any rate, he 
would not escape us by going out to sea. At length, 
having got as near as was convenient, and looking out 
not to get a blow from his tail, now the bow-gunner 
delivered his charge, while the stern-man held his 
ground. But the halibut-skinned monster, in one of 
these swift-gliding pregnant moments, without ever 
ceasing his bobbing up and down, saw fit, without a 
chuckle or other prelude, to proclaim himself a huge 
imprisoned spar, placed there as a buoy, to warn sailors 
of sunken rocks. So, each casting some blame upon 
the other, we withdrew quickly to safer waters. 

The Scene-shifter saw fit here to close the drama 
of this day, without regard to any unities which we 
mortals prize. Whether it might have proved tragedy, 
or comedy, or tragi-comedy or pastoral, we cannot tell. 
This Sunday ended by the going down of the sun, 
leaving us still on the waves. But they who are on the 
water enjoy a longer and brighter twilight than they 
who are on the land, for here the water, as well as the 
atmosphere, absorbs and reflects the light, and some 
of the day seems to have sunk down into the waves. 
The light gradually forsook the deep water, as well 
as the deeper air, and the gloaming came to the fishes 
as well as to us, and more dim and gloomy to them, 
whose day is a perpetual twilight, though sufficiently 
bright for their weak and watery eyes. Vespers had 
already rung in many a dim and watery chapel down 



SUNDA Y. Ill 

below, where the shadows of the weeds were extended 
in length over the sandy floor. The vespertinal pout 
had already begun to flit on leathern fin, and the finny 
gossips withdrew from the fluvial street to creeks and 
coves, and other private haunts, excepting a few of 
stronger fin, which anchored in the stream, stemming 
the tide even in their dreams. Meanwhile, like a 
dark evening cloud, we were wafted over the cope of 
their sky, deepening the shadows on their deluged 
fields. 

Having reached a retired part of the river where it 
spread out to sixty rods in width, we pitched our tent 
on the east side, in Tyngsboro', just above some 
patches of the beach plum, which was now nearly 
ripe, where the sloping bank was a sufficient pillow, 
and with the bustle of sailors making the land, we 
transferred such stores as were required from boat 
to tent, and hung a lantern to the tent-pole, and so 
our house was ready. With a buffalo spread on the 
grass, and a blanket for our covering, our bed was 
soon made. A fire crackled merrily before the 
entrance, so near that we could tend it without step- 
ping abroad, and when we had supped, we put out the 
blaze, and closed the door, and with the semblance of 
domestic comfort, sat up to read the gazetteer, to learn 
our latitude and longitude, and write the journal of the 
voyage, or listened to the wind and the rippling of the 
river till sleep overtook us. There we lay under an 
oak on the bank of the stream, near to some farmer's 
cornfield, getting sleep, and forgetting where we were ; 
a great blessing, that we are obliged to forget our 
enterprises every twelve hours. Minks, muskrats, 
meadow-mice, woodchucks, squirrels, skunks, rabbits, 
foxes and weasels, all inhabit near, but keep very close 



112 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

while you are there. The river sucking and eddying 
away all night down toward the marts and the sea- 
board; a great work and freshet, and no small enter- 
prise to reflect on. Instead of the Scythian vastness 
of the Billerica night, and its wild musical sounds, we 
were kept awake by the boisterous sport of some Irish 
laborers on the railroad, wafted to us over the water, 
still unwearied and unresting on this seventh day, who 
would not have done with whirling up and down the 
track with ever increasing velocity and still reviving 
shouts, till late in the night. 

One sailor was visited in his dreams this night by 
the Evil Destinies, and all those powers that are hostile 
to human life, which constrain and oppress the minds 
of men, and make their path seem difficult and narrow, 
and beset with dangers, so that the most innocent and 
worthy enterprises appear insolent and a tempting of 
fate, and the gods go not with us. But the other 
happily passed serene and even ambrosial or immortal 
night, and his sleep was dreamless, or only the atmos- 
phere of pleasant dreams remained, a happy natural 
sleep until the morning, and his cheerful spirit soothed 
and reassured his brother, for whenever they meet, the 
Good Genius is sure to prevail. 



MONDAY. 

" I thynke for to touche also 
The worlde whiche neweth everie dale, 
So as I can, so as I male." Gower. 

" Gazed on the Heavens for what he missed on Earth." 

Britannia' s Pastorals. 

When the first light dawned on the earth, and the 
birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippHng 
confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind 
rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all men, having 
reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and 
cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted 
adventures. 

One of us took the boat over to the opposite shore, 
which was flat and accessible, a quarter of a mile dis- 
tant, to empty it of water and wash out the clay, while 
the other kindled a fire and got breakfast ready. At 
an early hour we were again on our way, rowing 
through the fog as before, the river already awake, 
and a million crisped waves come forth to meet the 
sun when he should show himself. The countrymen, 
recruited by their day of rest, were already stirring, 
and had begun to cross the ferry on the business of 
the week. This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, 
and all the world seemed anxious to get across the 
Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to 
get set over, — children with their two cents done 
up in paper, jail-birds broke loose and constable with 
"3 



114 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

warrant, travellers from distant lands to distant lands, 
men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a 
bar. There stands a gig in the gray morning, in the 
mist, the impatient traveller pacing the wet shore with 
whip in hand, and shouting through the fog after the 
regardless Charon and his retreating ark, as if he might 
throw that passenger overboard and return forthwith 
for himself; he will compensate him. He is to break 
his fast at some unseen place on the opposite side, k 
may be Ledyard or the Wandering Jew. Whence, 
pray did he come out of the foggy night ? and whither 
through the sunny day will he go ? We observe only 
his transit ; important to us, forgotten by him, transit- 
ing all day. There are two of them. May be, they are 
Virgil and Dante. But when they crossed the Styx, 
none were seen bound up or down the stream, that I 
remember. It is only a transjecttis, a transitory voy- 
age, like life itself, none but the long-lived gods bound 
up or down the stream. Many of these Monday men 
are ministers, no doubt, reseeking their parishes with 
hired horses, with sermons in their valises all read and 
gutted, the day after never with them. They cross 
each other's routes all the country over like woof and 
warp, making a garment of loose texture; vacation 
now for six days. They stop to pick nuts and 
berries, and gather apples by the wayside at their 
leisure. Good religious men, with the love of men 
in their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in 
their pockets. We got over this ferry chain without 
scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel, — no toll 
from us that day. 

The fog dispersed and we rowed leisurely along 
through Tyngsboro', with a clear sky and a mild 
atmosphere, leaving the habitations of men behind 



MONDAY. 115 

and penetrating yet further into the territory of 
ancient Dunstable. It was from Dunstable, then a 
frontier town, that the famous Capt. Lovewell, with 
his company, marched in quest of the Indians on the 
i8th of April, 1725. He was the son of "an ensign 
in the army of Oliver Cromwell, who came to this 
country, and settled at Dunstable, where he died at 
the great age of one hundred and twenty years." 
In the words of the old nursery tale, sung about a 
hundred years ago, — 

" He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide, 
And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride." 

In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the 
"rebel Indians,"' and prevailed, after a bloody fight, 
and a remnant returned home to enjoy the fame of 
their victory. A township called LovewelPs Town, 
but now, for some reason, or perhaps without reason, 
Pembroke, was granted them by the State. 

" Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four, 
And of the rebel Indians, there were about four score; 
And sixteen of our English did safely home return, 
The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must 
mourn. 

" Our worthy Capt. Lovewell among them there did die, 
They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, 
Who was our English Chaplin; he many Indians slew, 
And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew." 

Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the 
Indians, and their degenerate children no longer 
dwell in garrisoned houses, nor hear any war-whoop 
in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many 
an " English Chaplin " in these days could exhibit as 



Il6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

unquestionable trophies of his valor as did " good 
young Frye." We have need to be as sturdy pioneers 
still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We 
are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as 
convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are 
exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about 
the clearings to-day ? — 

" And braving many dangers and hardships in the way, 
They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of 
May." 

But they did not all " safe arrive in Dunstable the 
thirteenth," or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth " day of 
May." Eleazer Davis and Josiah Jones, both of Con- 
cord, for our native town had seven men in this fight, 
Lieutenant Farwell, of Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye, 
of Andover, who were all wounded, were left behind, 
creeping toward the settlements. " After travelling 
several miles, Frye was left and lost," though a more 
recent poet has assigned him company in his last 
hours. — 

" A man he was of comely form, 

Polished and brave, well learned and kind ; 
Old Harvard's learned halls he left 
Far in the wilds a grave to find. 

" Ah ! now his blood-red arm he lifts ; 
His closing lids he tries to raise ; 
And speak once more before he dies, 
In supplication and in praise. 

" He prays kind Heaven to grant success, 
Brave Lovewell's men to guide and bless, 
And when they 've shed their heart-blood true, 
To raise them all to happiness." * * 



MONDAY, 117 

" Lieutenant Farwell took his hand, 
His arm around his neck he threw, 
And said, ' brave Chaplain I could wish, 
That Heaven had made me die for you.' " 

Farwell held out eleven days. "A tradition says," 
as we learn from the history of Concord, " that arriv- 
ing at a pond with Lieut. Farwell, Davis pulled off one 
of his moccasins, cut it in strings, on which he fast- 
ened a hook, caught some fish, fried and ate them. 
They refreshed him, but were injurious to Farwell, 
who died soon after." Davis had a ball lodged in 
his body, and his right hand shot off; but on the 
whole, he seems to have been less damaged than his 
companion. He came into Berwick after being out 
fourteen days. Jones also had a ball lodged in his 
body, but he likewise got into Saco after fourteen 
days, though not in the best condition imaginable. 
"He had subsisted," says an old journal, "on the 
spontaneous vegetables of the forest ; and cranberries, 
which he had eaten, came out of wounds he had re- 
ceived in his body." This was also the case with 
Davis. The last two reached home at length, safe 
if not sound, and lived many years in a crippled state 
to enjoy their pension. 

But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their adven- 
tures in the woods, — 

" For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell. 
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well," — 

how many balls lodged with them, how it fared with 
their cranberries, what Berwick or Saco they got into, 
and finally what pension or township was granted 
them, there is no journal to tell. 

It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that just 



Il8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

before his last march, Lovewell was warned to beware 
of the ambuscades of the enemy, but " he replied, 
' that he did not care for them,' and bending down 
a small elm beside which he was standing into a bow, 
declared ' that he would treat the Indians in the same 
way.' This elm is still standing [in Nashua], a vener- 
able and magnificent tree." 

Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe Interval in 
Tyngsboro', where the river makes a sudden bend to 
the northwest, — for our reflections have anticipated 
our progress somewhat, — we were advancing further 
into the country and into the day, which last proved 
almost as golden as the preceding, though the slight 
bustle and activity of the Monday seemed to penetrate 
even to this scenery. Now and then we had to muster 
all our energy to get round a point, where the river 
broke rippling over rocks, and the maples trailed their 
branches in the stream, but there was generally a back- 
water or eddy on the side, of which we took advan- 
tage. The river was here about forty rods wide and 
fifteen feet deep. Occasionally one ran along the 
shore, examining the country, and visiting the nearest 
farm-houses, while the other followed the windings 
of the stream alone, to meet his companion at some 
distant point, and hear the report of his adventures ; 
how the farmer praised the coolness of his well, and 
his wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, or the 
children quarrelled for the only transparency in the 
window that they might get sight of the man at 
the well. For though the country seemed so new, 
and no house was observed by us, shut in between 
the high banks that sunny day, we did not have to 
travel far to find where men inhabited, like wild bees, 



MONDAY. 119 

and had sunk wells in the loose sand and loam of the 
Merrimack. There dwelt the subject of the Hebrew 
scriptures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin vapor- 
ous smoke curled up through the noon. All that is 
told of mankind, of the inhabitants of the Upper 
Nile, and the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the 
Orinoko, was experience here. Every race and class 
of men was represented. According to Belknap, the 
historian of Nev/ Hampshire, who wrote sixty years 
ago, here too, perchance, dwelt " new lights," and free 
thinking men even then. "The people in general 
throughout the State," it is written, " are professors 
of the Christian religion in some form or other. 
There is, however, a sort of wise men, who pretend 
to reject it ; but they have not yet been able to sub- 
stitute a better in its place." 

The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the mean- 
while have seen a brown hawk, or a woodchuck, or 
a musquash, creeping under the alders. 

We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or 
a willow, and drew forth a melon for our refreshment, 
while we contemplated at our leisure the lapse of the 
river and of human life ; and as that current, with its 
floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in 
review before us, while far away in cities and marts 
on this very stream, the old routine was proceeding 
still. There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, 
as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate, 
and the ebb always balances the flow. All streams 
are but tributary to the ocean, which itself does not 
stream, and the shores are unchanged but in longer 
periods than man can measure. Go where we will, 
we discover infinite change in particulars only, not in 
generals. When I go into a museum, and see the 



I20 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

mummies wrapped in their linen bandages,. I see that 
the times began to need reform as long ago as when 
they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, 
and meet men who declare that the time is near at 
hand for the redemption of the race. But as men 
lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable to-day. 
"Time drinketh up the essence of every great and 
noble action, which ought to be performed, and is 
delayed in the execution," so says Veeshnoo Sarma ; 
and we perceive that the schemers return again and 
again to common sense and labor. Such is the evi- 
dence of history. — 

" Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the 
Suns." 

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, 
of more importance than all the rest, which the his- 
torian can never know. 

There are many skilful apprentices, but few master 
workmen. On every hand we observe a truly wise 
practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of 
life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient phi- 
losopher. Who does not see that heresies have some 
time prevailed, that reforms have already taken place? 
All this worldly wisdom might be regarded as the 
once unamiable heresy of some wise man. Some 
interests have got a footing on the earth which we 
have not made sufficient allowance for. Even they 
who first built these barns, and cleared the land thus, 
had some valor. The abrupt epochs and chasms are 
smoothed down in history as the inequalities of the 
plain are concealed by distance. But unless we do 
more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are 



MONDAY. 121 

but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of 
life. 

Now that we are casting away these melon seeds, 
how can we help feeling reproach ? He who eats the 
fruit, should at least plant the seed ; aye, if possible, 
a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed. 
Seeds! there are seeds enough which need only to be 
stirred in with the soil where they lie, by an inspired 
voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor. O thou 
spendthrift ! Defray thy debt to the world ; eat not 
the seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but plant 
it rather, while thou devourest the pulp and tuber for 
thy subsistence ; that so, perchance, one variety may 
at last be found worthy of preservation. 

There are moments when all anxiety and stated 
toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose 
of nature. All laborers must have their nooning, and 
at this season of the day, we are all, more or less, 
Asiatics, and give over all work and reform. While 
lying thus on our oars by the side of the stream, in 
the heat of the day, our boat held by an osier put 
through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons, 
which are a fruit of the east, our thoughts reverted to 
Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of contem- 
plation and dwelling places of the ruminant nations. 
In the experience of this noontide we could find some 
apology even for the instinct of the opium, betel, and 
tobacco chewers. Mount Saber, according to the 
French traveller and naturalist, Botta, is celebrated 
for producing the Kdt tree, of which '' the soft tops 
of the twigs and tender leaves are eaten," says his 
reviewer, " and produce an agreeable soothing excite- 
ment, restoring from fatigue, banishing sleep, and 
disposing to the enjoyment of conversation." We 



122 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

thought that we might lead a dignified oriental life 
along this stream as well, and the maple and alders 
would be our Kdt trees. 

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the 
restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances 
exist? So do you and I. Think you that sitting 
hens are troubled with ennui these long summer days, 
sitting on and on in the crevice of a hay-loft, without 
active employment.^ By the faint cackling in distant 
barns, I judge that dame Nature is interested to know 
how many eggs her hens lay. The Universal Soul, 
as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, 
the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat 
meadows. Away in Scythia, away in India, it makes 
butter and cheese. Suppose that all farms are run 
out, and we youths must buy old land and bring it to, 
still everywhere the relentless opponents of reform 
bear a strange resemblance to ourselves ; or per- 
chance, they are a few old maids and bachelors, who 
sit round the kitchen hearth, and listen to the sing- 
ing of the kettle. "The oracles often give victory 
to our choice, and not to the order alone of the mun- 
dane periods. As, for instance, when they say, that 
our voluntary sorrows germinate in us as the growth 
of the particular life we lead." The reform which 
you talk about can be undertaken any morning before 
unbarring our doors. We need not call any conven- 
tion. When two neighbors begin to eat corn bread, 
who before ate wheat, then the gods smile from ear 
to ear, for it is very pleasant to them. Why do you 
not try it ? Don't let me hinder you. 

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all 
the world over, living on anticipation. Wolff, travel- 
ling in the deserts of Bokhara, says : " Another party 



MONDAY. 123 

of derveeshes came to me and observed, ^The time 
will come when there shall be no difference between 
rich and poor, between high and low, when property 
will be in common, even wives and children.' " But 
forever I ask of such. What then ? The derveeshes 
in the deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in Marl- 
boro' Chapel sing the same song. " There 's a good 
time coming, boys," but, asked one of the audience in 
good faith, " Can you fix the date? " Said I, " Will 
you help it along? " 

The nonchalance and dolcc-far-niente air of nature 
and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of 
mankind. The States have leisure to laugh from 
Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New 
England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian 
circles, while the poor reformer cannot get a hear- 
ing. 

Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, 
but for want of prudence to give wisdom the prefer- 
ence. What we need to know in any case is very 
simple. It is but too easy to establish another 
durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all 
parts of nature consent to it. Only make something 
to take the place of something, and men will behave 
as if it were the very thing they wanted. They must 
behave, at any rate, and will work up any material. 
There is always a present and extant life, be it better 
or worse, which all combine to uphold. We should 
be slow to mend, my friends, as slow to require mend- 
ing, " Not hurling, according to the oracle, a transcend- 
ent foot towards piety." The language of excitement 
is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before 
you can utter oracles. What was the excitement of 
the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom 



124 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

of Socrates? — or whoever it was that was wise. — 
Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. 

" Men find that action is another thing 

Than what they in discoursing papers read ; 
The world's affairs require in managing 
More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed." 

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may dis- 
cover the causes of all past change in the present 
invariable order of society. The greatest appreciable 
physical revolutions are the work of the light-footed 
air, the stealthy-paced water, and the subterranean 
fire. Aristotle said, "As time never fails, and the 
universe is eternal, neither the Tanais nor the Nile, 
can have flowed forever." We are independent of 
the change we detect. The longer the lever the less 
perceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation 
which is the most vital. The hero then will know 
how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good 
abides with him who waiteth wisely ; we shall sooner 
overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurry- 
ing over the hills of the west. Be assured that every 
man's success is in proportion to his average ability. 
The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the 
waters annually deposit their slime, not where they 
reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, 
nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not 
yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. 
Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work 
will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall 
discover the real purport of our toil. As when the 
farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks 
back, he can best tell where the pressed earth shines 
most. 



MONDAY. 125 

To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate 
the true state of things, the political state can hardly 
be said to have any existence whatever. It is unreal, 
incredible and insignificant to him, and for him to 
endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material 
is like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar cane 
may be had. Generally speaking, the political news, 
whether domestic or foreign, might be written to-day 
for the next ten years, with sufficient accuracy. Most 
revolutions in society have not power to interest, still 
less alarm us ; but tell me that our rivers are drying 
up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I 
might attend. Most events recorded in history are 
more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the 
sun and moon, by Avhich all are attracted, but whose 
effects no one takes the trouble to calculate. But will 
the government never be so w^ell administered, inquired 
one, that we private men shall hear nothing about it ? 
" The king answered : At all events, I require a pru- 
dent and able man, who is capable of managing the 
state affairs of my kingdom. The ex-minister said, 
The criterion, O Sire! of a wise and competent man, 
is, that he will not meddle with such like matters." 
Alas, that the ex-minister should have been so nearly 
right. 

In my short experience of human life, the outward 
obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living 
men, but the institutions of the dead. It is grateful 
to make one's way through this latest generation as 
through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the 
morning to the unsuspicious. — 

" And round about good-morrows fly, 
As if day taught humanity." 



126 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

Not being Reve of this Shire, 

*' The early pilgrim blithe he hailed, 
That o'er the hills did stray, 
And many an early husbandman, 
That he met on his way ; " — 

thieves and robbers all nevertheless. I have not so 
surely foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway would 
come to disturb the honest and simple commonwealth, 
as that some monster institution would at length 
embrace and crush its free members in its scaly 
folds ; for it is not to be forgotten, that while the 
law holds fast the thief and murderer, it lets itself 
go loose. When I have not paid the tax which the 
State demanded for that protection which I did not 
want, itself has robbed me ; when I have asserted 
the liberty it presumed to declare, itself has impris- 
oned me. Poor creature! if it knows no better I 
will not blame it. If it cannot live but by these 
means, I can. I do not wish, it happens, to be 
associated with Massachusetts, either in holding 
slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better 
than herself in these respects. — As for Massachusetts, 
that huge she Briareus, Argus, and Colchian Dragon 
conjoined, set to watch the Heifer of the Constitution 
and the Golden Fleece, we would not warrant our 
respect for her, like some compositions, to preserve 
its qualities through all weathers. — Thus it has 
happened, that not the Arch Fiend himself has been 
m my way, but these toils which tradition says were 
originally spun to obstruct him. They are cobwebs 
and trifling obstacles in an earnest man's path, it is 
true, and at length one even becomes attached to his 
unswept and undusted garret. I love man — kind, but 



MONDAY. 127 

I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men 
execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, 
to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, 
and the living are but their executors. Such founda- 
tion too have our lectures and our sermons commonly. 
They are all Diidleian ; and piety derives its origin 
still from that exploit of prus ALiieas^ who bore his 
father, Anchises, on his shoulders from the ruins of 
Troy. Or rather, like some Indian tribes, we bear 
about with us the mouldering relics of our ancestors 
on our shoulders. If, for instance, a man asserts the 
value of individual liberty over the merely political 
commonweal, his neighbor still tolerates him, that 
is he who is living near him, sometimes even sustains 
him, but never the State. Its officer, as a living man, 
may have human virtues and a thought in his brain, 
but as the tool of an institution, a jailor or constable 
it may be, he is not a whit superior to his prison key 
or his staff. Herein is the tragedy ; that men doing 
outrage to their proper natures, even those called wise 
and good, lend themselves to perform the office of 
inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and 
slavery in ; and what else may not come in by this 
opening? But certainly there are modes by which a 
man may put bread into his mouth which will not 
prejudice him as a companion and neighbor. 

" Now turn again, turn again, said the pinder, 
For a wrong way you have gone. 
For you have forsaken the king's highway, 
And made a path over the corn." 

Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for, be- 
cause society is not animated, or instinct enough with 
life, but in the condition of some snakes which I have 
seen in early spring, with alternate portions of their 



128 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

bodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggle 
neither way. All men are partially buried in the 
grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown 
of the head above ground. Better are the physically 
dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no 
longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should 
be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the 
same channel, but a new water every instant. — 

"Virtues as rivers pass, 

But still remains that virtuous man there was." 

Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, 
but marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead. We 
read that when in the expedition of Alexander, One- 
sicritus was sent forward to meet certain of the Indian 
sect of Gymnosophists, and he had told them of those 
new philosophers of the west, Pythagoras, Socrates, 
and Diogenes, and their doctrines, one of them named 
Dandamis answered, that " They appeared to him to 
have been men of genius, but to have lived with too 
passive a regard for the laws." The philosophers of 
the west are liable to this rebuke still. "They say 
that Lieou-hia-hoei, and Chao-lien did not sustain to 
the end their resolutions, and that they dishonored 
their character. Their language was in harmony with 
reason and justice ; while their acts were in harmony 
with the sentiments of men." 

Chateaubriand said, " There are two things which 
grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as 
he advances in years ; the love of country and reli- 
gion. Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, 
they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed 
in all their charms, and excite in the recesses of our 
hearts, an attachment justly due to their beauty." It 



MONDAY. 129 

may be so. But even this infirmity of noble minds 
marks the gradual decay of youthful hope and faith. 
It is the allowed infidelity of age. There is a saying 
of the Yoloflfs, " He who was born first has the greatest 
number of old clothes/' consequently M. Chateaubri- 
and has more old clothes than I have. It is com- 
paratively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, 
not an essential and intrinsic one. It is because the 
old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they 
have measured the strength of man. They will not 
boast ; they will be frank and humble. Well, let them 
have the few poor comforts they can keep. Humility 
is still a very human virtue. They look back on life, 
and so see not into the future. The prospect of the 
young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future 
with the present. In the declining day the thoughts 
make haste to rest in darkness, and hardly look for- 
ward to the ensuing morning. The thoughts of the 
old prepare for night and slumber. The same hopes 
and prospects are not for him who stands upon the 
rosy mountain-tops of life, and him who expects the 
setting of his earthly day. 

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the 
name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a 
hindrance. However flattering order and experience 
may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we 
will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, 
and maintain ourselves on this earth and in this life, 
as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let 
us see if we cannot stay here where He has put us, on 
his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as 
his light? The expedients of the nations clash with 
one another, only the absolutely right is expedient for 
all. 



130 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

There are some passages in the Antigone of Sopho- 
cles, well known to scholars, of which I am reminded 
in this connection. Antigone has resolved to sprinkle 
sand on the dead body of her brother, Polynices. not- 
withstanding the edict of King Creon condemning to 
death that one who should perform this service, which 
the Greeks deemed so important, for the enemy of his 
country ; but Ismene, who is of a less resolute and 
noble spirit, declines taking part with her sister in 
this work, and says, — 

" I, therefore, asking those under the earth to con- 
sider me, that I am compelled to do thus, will obey 
those who are placed in office ; for to do extreme 
things is not wise." 

ANTIGONE. 

" I would not ask you, nor would you, if you still 
wished, do it joyfully with me. Be such as seems 
good to you. But I will bury him. It is glorious for 
me doing this to die. I beloved will lie with him 
beloved, having, like a criminal, done what is holy ; 
since the time is longer which it is necessary for me 
to please those below, than those here, for there I 
shall always lie. But if it seems good to you, hold in 
dishonor things which are honored by the gods." 

ISMENE. 

^'I indeed do not hold them in dishonor ; but to act 
in opposition to the citizens I am by nature unable." 

Antigone being at length brought before King 
Creon, he asks, 

'* Did you then dare to transgress these laws ? " 



MONDAY. 131 



ANTIGONE. 



" For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these to me, 
nor Justice who dwells with the gods below ; it was 
not they who established these laws among men. 
Nor did I think that your proclamations were so 
strong, as, being a mortal, to be able to transcend the 
unwritten and immovable laws of the gods. For not 
something now and yesterday, but forever these live, 
and no one knows from what time they appeared. I 
was not about to pay the penalty of violating these to 
the gods, fearing the presumption of any man. For 
I well knew that I should die, and why not? even if 
you had not proclaimed it." 

This was concerning the burial of a dead body. 

The wisest conservatism is that of the Hindoos. 
" Immemorial custom is transcendent law," says Menu. 
That is, it was the custom of the gods before men 
used it. The fault of our New England custom is 
that it is memorial. What is morality but immemo- 
rial custom? Conscience is the chief of conserva- 
tives. " Perform the settled functions," says Kreeshna 
in the Bhagvat-Geeta, "action is preferable to inac- 
tion. The journey of thy mortal frame may not suc- 
ceed from inaction." — "A man's own calling, with all 
its faults, ought not to be forsaken. Every undertak- 
ing is involved in its faults as the fire in its smoke." — 
" The man who is acquainted with the whole, should 
not drive those from their works who are slow of 
comprehension, and less experienced than himself." — 
"Wherefore, O Arjoon, resolve to fight," — is the 
advice of the God to the irresolute soldier who fears 
to slay his best friends. It is a subUme conservatism ; 



132 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

as wide as the world, and as unwearied as time ; pre- 
serving the universe with Asiatic anxiety, in that state 
in which it appeared to their minds. These philoso- 
phers dwell on the inevitability and unchangeableness 
of laws, on the power of temperament and constitu- 
tion, the ihrQQ goo)i or qualities, and the circumstances 
of birth and affinity. The end is an immense conso- 
lation ; eternal absorption in Brahma. Their specu- 
lations never venture beyond their own table lands, 
though they are high and vast as they. Buoyancy, 
freedom, flexibility, variety, possibility, which also are 
qualities of the Unnamed, they deal not with . The 
undeserved reward is to be earned by an everlasting 
moral drudgery ; the incalculable promise of the mor- 
row is, as it were, weighed. And who will say that their 
conservatism has not been effectual. "Assuredly," 
says a French translator, speaking of the antiquity 
and durability of the Chinese and Indian nations, and 
of the wisdom of their legislators, "there are there 
some vestiges of the eternal laws which govern the 
world." 

Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, practi- 
cal, and, in a large sense, radical. So many years 
and ages of the gods those eastern sages sat contem- 
plating Brahm, uttering in silence the mystic " Om," 
being absorbed into the essence of the Supreme Being, 
never going out of themselves, but subsiding further 
and deeper within ; so infinitely wise, yet infinitely 
stagnant ; until, at last, in that same Asia, but in the 
western part of it, appeared a youth, wholly unforetold 
by them, — not being absorbed into Brahm, but bring- 
ing Brahm down to earth and to mankind ; in whom 
Brahm had awaked from his long sleep, and exerted 
himself, and the day began, — a new avatar. The 



MONDA Y. 



133 



Brahman had never thought to be a brother of man- 
kind as well as a child of God. Christ is the prince 
of Reformers and Radicals. Many expressions in 
the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all 
protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and 
practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no 
wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum 
of good sense. It never reflects^ but it repents. There 
is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the 
light of pure beauty, but moral truth is its object. 
All mortals are convicted by its conscience. 

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure 
morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its 
pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere raised 
into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region 
of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta. Warren Has- 
tings, in his sensible letter recommending the trans- 
lation of this book to the Chairman of the East India 
Company, declares the original to be " of a sublimity 
of conception, reasoning, and diction, almost une- 
qualled," and that the writings of the Indian philoso- 
phers "will survive when the British dominion in 
India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the 
sources which it once yielded of wealth and power 
are lost to remembrance." It is unquestionably one 
of the noblest and most sacred scriptures that have 
come down to us. Books are to be distinguished by 
the grandeur of their topics, even more than by the 
manner in which they are treated. The oriental phi- 
losophy approaches, easily, loftier themes than the 
modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes 
prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank 
respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather 
does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers 



134 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

have not conceived of the significance of Contempla- 
tion in their sense. Speaking of the spiritual disci- 
pline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves, 
and the wonderful power of abstraction to which they 
attained, instances of which had come under his 
notice, Hastings says : — 

" To those who have never been accustomed to the 
separation of the mind from the notices of the senses, 
it may not be easy to conceive by what means such a 
power is to be attained ; since even the most studious 
men of our hemisphere will find it difficult so to re- 
strain their attention, but that it will wander to some 
object of present sense or recollection ; and even the 
buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power to dis- 
turb it. But if we are told that there have been men 
who were successively, for ages past, in the daily 
habit of abstracted contemplation, begun in the earli- 
est period of youth, and continued in many to the 
maturity of age, each adding some portion of knowl- 
edge to the store accumulated by his predecessors ; 
it is not assuming too much to conclude, that as the 
mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by exercise, 
so in such an exercise it may in each have acquired 
the faculty to which they aspired, and that their col- 
lective studies may have led them to the discovery of 
new tracks and combinations of sentiment, totally dif- 
ferent from the doctrines with which the learned of 
other nations are acquainted ; doctrines which, how- 
ever speculative and subtle, still, as they possess the 
advantage of being derived from a source so free from 
every adventitious mixture, may be equally founded 
in truth with the most simple of our own." 



MONDAY. 135 

" The forsaking of works " was taught by Kreeshna 
to the most ancient of men, and handed down from 
one to another, '^ until at length, in the course of time, 
the mighty art was lost. 

" In wisdom is to be found every work without ex- 
ception," says Kreeshna. 

" Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, 
thou shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin with the 
bark of wisdom.*" 

" There is not anything in this world to be com- 
pared with wisdom for purity." 

''The action stands at a distance inferior to the 
application of wisdom." 

The wisdom of a Moonee " is confirmed, when, like 
the tortoise, he can draw in all his members, and re- 
strain them from their wonted purposes." 

" Children only, and not the learned, speak of the 
speculative and the practical doctrines as two. They 
are but one. For both obtain the self-same end, and 
the place which is gained by the followers of the one, 
is gained by the followers of the other." 

" The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, from 
the non-commencement of that which he hath to do ; 
nor doth he obtain happiness from a total inactivity. 
No one ever resteth a moment inactive. Every man 
is involuntarily urged to act by those principles which 
are inherent in his nature. The man who restraineth 
his active faculties, and sitteth down with his mind at- 
tentive to the objects of his senses, is called one of an 
astrayed soul, and the practiser of deceit. So the 
man is praised, who, having subdued all his passions, 
performeth with his active faculties all the functions 
of life, unconcerned about the event." 

" Let the motive be in the deed and not in the 



136 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope 
of reward. Let not thy life be spent in inaction." 

" For the man who doeth that which he hath to do, 
without affection, obtaineth the Supreme." 

" He who may behold, as it were inaction in action, 
and action in inaction, is wise amongst mankind. 
He is a perfect performer of all duty." 

" Wise men call him a Pajideet, whose every under- 
taking is free from the idea of desire, and whose 
actions are consumed by the fire of wisdom. He 
abandoneth the desire of a reward of his actions ; he 
is always contented and independent; and although 
he may be engaged in a work, he, as it were, doeth 
nothing." 

" He is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who per- 
formeth that which he hath to do independent of the 
fruit thereof; not he who liveth without the sacrificial 
fire and without action." 

" He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which is left of 
his offerings, obtaineth the eternal spirit of Brahm, 
the Supreme." 

What after all does the practicalness of life amount 
to? The things immediate to be done are very trivial. 
I could postpone them all to hear this locust sing. 
The most glorious fact in our experience is not any- 
thing that we have done or may hope to do, but a 
transient thought, or vision, or dream, which we have 
had. I would give all the wealth of the world, and all 
the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. But 
how can I communicate with the gods who am a 
pencil-maker on the earth, and not be insane ? 

'^I am the same to all mankind," says Kreeshna; 
" there is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred." 



MONDAY. 137 

This teaching is not practical in the sense in which 
the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense 
in practice. The Brahman never proposes courage- 
ously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. 
His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste, 
of impassable limits, of destiny, and the tyranny of 
time. Kreeshna's argument, it must be allowed, is 
defective. No sufficient reason is given why Arjoon 
should fight. Arjoon may be convinced, but the 
reader is not, for his judgment is not "formed upon 
speculative doctrines of the Sankhya Sastra.''"' " Seek 
an asylum in wisdom alone," — but what is wisdom 
to a western mind ? He speaks of duty, but the duty 
of which he speaks, is it not an arbitrary one? When 
was it established? The Brahman's virtue consists 
not in doing right, but arbitrary things. What is that 
which a man "hath to do"? What is "action"? 
What are the " settled functions " ? What is " a man's 
own religion," which is so much better than another's? 
What is " a man's own particular calling " ? What are 
the duties which are appointed by one's birth? It 
is in fact a defence of the institution of caste, of what 
is called the " natural duty " of the Kshetree. or 
soldier, " to attach himself to the discipline," " not to 
flee from the field," and the like. But they who are 
unconcerned about the consequences of their actions, 
are not therefore unconcerned about their actions. — 
Yet we know not where we should look for a loftier 
speculative faith. 

Behold the difference between the oriental and the 
occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world ; 
the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun 
till his eyes are put out ; the other follows him prone 
in his westward course. There is such a thing as 



138 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

caste, even in the West ; but it is comparatively faint. 
It is conservatism liere. It says forsake not your 
calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no 
bonds. The State is thy parent. Its virtue or man- 
hood is wholly filial. There is a struggle between 
the oriental and occidental in every nation ; some who 
would be forever contemplating the sun, and some 
who are hastening toward the sunset. The former 
class says to the latter, When you have reached the 
sunset, you will be no nearer to the sun. To which 
the latter replies, But we so prolong the day. The 
former " walketh but in that night, when all things go 
to rest, the night of twie. The contemplative Moonee 
sleepeth but in the day of time when all things wake." 

To conclude these extracts, I can say, in the words 
of Sanjay, " As, O mighty Prince ! I recollect again 
and again this holy and wonderful dialogue of 
Kreeshna and Arjoon, I continue more and more to 
rejoice ; and as I recall to my memory the more than 
miraculous form of Haree, my astonishment is great, 
and I marvel and rejoice again and again ! Wherever 
Kreeshna the God of devotion may be, wherever 
Arjoon the mighty bowman may be, there too, without 
doubt, are fortune, riches, victory, and good conduct. 
This is my firm belief." 

I would say to the readers of Scriptures, if they 
wish for a good book to read. Read the Bhagvat- 
Geeta, an episode to the Mahabharat, said to have 
been written by Kreeshna Dwypayen Veias, — known 

to have been written by , more than four thousand 

years ago, — it matters not whether three or four, or 
when, — translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves 
to be read Avith reverence even by Yankees, as a part 
of the sacred writings of a devout people ; and the 



MONDAY. 139 

intelligent Hebrew will rejoice to find in it a moral 
grandeur and sublimity akin to those of his own 
Scriptures. 

To an American reader, who, by the advantage 
of his position, can see over that strip of Atlantic 
coast to Asia and the Pacific, who, as it were, sees the 
shore slope upward over the Alps to the Himmaleh 
mountains, the comparatively recent literature of 
Europe often appears partial and clannish, and, not- 
withstanding the limited range of his own sympathies 
and studies, the European writer who presumes that 
he is speaking for the world, is perceived by him to 
speak only for that corner of it which he inhabits. 
One of the rarest of England's scholars and critics, in 
his classification of the worthies of the world, betrays 
the narrowness of his European culture and the 
exclusiveness of his reading. None of her children 
has done justice to the poets and philosophers of 
Persia or of India. They have been better known to 
her merchant scholars than to her poets and thinkers 
by profession. You may look in vain through English 
poetry for a single memorable verse inspired by these 
themes. Nor is Germany to be excepted, though her 
philological industry is indirectly serving the cause of 
philosophy and poetry. Even Goethe, one would 
say, wanted that universality of genius which could 
have appreciated the philosophy of India, if he had more 
nearly approached it. His genius was more practical, 
dwelling much more in the regions of the understand- 
ing, and less native to contemplation, than the genius 
of those sages. It is remarkable that Homer and a 
few Hebrews are the most oriental names which 
modern Europe, whose literature has taken its rise 
since the decline of the Persian, has admitted into her 



I40 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

list of Worthies, and perhaps the worthiest of man- 
kind, and the fathers of modern thinking, — for the con- 
templations of those Indian sages have influenced the 
intellectual development of mankind, — whose works 
even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, for 
the most part, not recognized as ever having existed. 
If the lions had been the painters it would have been 
otherwise. In every one's youthful dreams phi- 
losophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with 
singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after 
years discover its local habitation in the Western 
world. In comparison with the philosophers of the 
East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given 
birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal phi- 
losophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakspeare 
seems sometimes youthfully green and practical 
merely. Some of these sublime sentences, as the 
Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, for instance, still sur- 
viving after a thousand revolutions and translations, 
make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not 
transitory, and not essential to the most effective and 
enduring expression of thought. Ex or lent c /?^xmay 
still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world 
has not yet derived from the East all the light which 
it is destined to receive thence. 

It would be worthy of the age to print together the 
collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several 
nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the 
Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. 
The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on 
the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scrip- 
ture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and compari- 
son might help to liberalize the faith of men. This 
is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to 



MONDAY. 141 

crown the labors of the printing press. This would 
be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the mission- 
aries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth. 

While engaged in these reflections, thinking our- 
selves the only navigators of these waters, suddenly 
a canal boat, with its sail set, glided round a point 
before us, like some huge river beast, and changed 
the scene in an instant ; and then another and an- 
other glided into sight, and we found ourselves in the 
current of commerce once more. So we threw our 
rinds into the water for the fishes to nibble, and added 
our breath to the life of living men. Little did we 
think in the distant garden in which we had planted 
the seed and reared this fruit, where it would be eaten. 
Our melons lay at home on the sandy bottom of the 
Merrimack, and our potatoes in the sun and water at 
the bottom of the boat looked like a fruit of the coun- 
try. Soon, however, we were delivered from this fleet 
of junks, and possessed the river in solitude, rowing 
steadily upward through the noon, between the ter- 
ritories of Nashua on the one hand, and Hudson, 
once Nottingham, on the other; from time to time 
scaring up a king-fisher or a summer duck, the former 
flying rather by vigorous impulses, than by steady and 
patient steering with that short rudder of his, sound- 
ing his rattle along the fluvial street. 

Ere long another scow hove in sight, creeping down 
the river, and hailing it, we attached ourselves to its 
side, and floated back in company, chatting with the 
boatmen, and obtaining a draught of cooler water 
from their jug. They appeared to be green hands 
from far among the hills, who had taken this means 
to get to the seaboard, and see the world ; and would 



142 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

possibly visit the Falkland Isles, and the China seas, 
before they again saw the waters of the Merrimack, 
or perchance, not return this way forever. They had 
already embarked the private interests of the lands- 
man in the larger venture of the race, and were ready 
to mess with mankind, reserving only the till of a 
chest to themselves. But they too were soon lost 
behind a point, and we went croaking on our way 
alone. What grievance has its root among the New 
Hampshire hills ? we asked ; what is wanting to human 
life here, that these men should make such haste to 
the antipodes ? We prayed that their bright anticipa- 
tions might not be rudely disappointed. 

Though all the fates should prove unkind, 
Leave not your native land behind. 
The ship, becalmed, at length stands still; 
The steed must rest beneath the hill ; 
But swiftly still our fortunes pace, 
To find us out in every place. 

The vessel, though her masts be firm, 

Beneath her copper bears a worm ; 

Around the cape, across the line, 

Till fields of ice her course confine ; 

It matters not how smooth the breeze, 

How shallow or how deep the seas. 

Whether she bears Manilla twine, 

Or in her hold Madeira wine. 

Or China teas, or Spanish hides. 

In port or quarantine she rides ; 

Far from New England's blustering shore. 

New England's worm her hulk shall bore, 

And sink her in the Indian seas, 

Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas. 

We passed a small desert here on the east bank, 
between Tyngsboro' and Hudson, which was interest- 



MONDA Y. 



143 



ing and even refreshing to our eyes in the midst of 
the almost universal greenness. This sand was in- 
deed somewhat impressive and beautiful to us. A 
very old inhabitant, who was at work in a field on 
the Nashua side, told us that he remembered when 
corn and grain grew there, and it was a cultivated 
field. But at length the fishermen, for this was a 
fishing place, pulled up the bushes on the shore, for 
greater convenience in hauling their seines, and when 
the bank was thus broken, the wind began to blow up 
the sand from the shore, until at length it had covered 
about fifteen acres several feet deep. We saw near 
the river, where the sand was blown off down to some 
ancient surface, the foundation of an Indian wigwam 
exposed, a perfect circle of burnt stones four or five 
feet in diameter, mingled with fine charcoal and the 
bones of small animals, which had been preserved in 
the sand. The surrounding sand was sprinkled with 
other burnt stones on which their fires had been built, 
as well as with flakes of arrow-head stone, and we found 
one perfect arrow-head. In one place we noticed 
where an Indian had sat to manufacture arrow-heads 
out of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with a quart 
of small glass-like chips about as big as a fourpence, 
which he had broken off in his work. Here, then, 
the Indians must have fished before the whites arrived. 
There was another similar sandy tract about half a 
mile above this. 

Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prow 
aside to bathe, and recline ourselves under some 
buttonwoods by a ledge of rocks, in a retired pasture, 
sloping to the water's edge, and skirted with pines 
and hazels, in the town of Hudson. Still had India, 



144 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and that old noontide philosophy, the better part of 
our thoughts. 

It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with 
common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades 
of Veeshnoo Sarma ; a playful wisdom which has 
eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. 
It asserts their health and independence of the expe- 
rience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot 
be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly 
reflect upon itself. The story and fabulous portion 
of this book winds loosely from sentence to sentence 
as so many oases in a desert, and is as indistinct as a 
camel's track between Mourzouk and Darfour. It is 
a comment on the flow and freshet of modern books. 
The reader leaps from sentence to sentence, as from 
one stepping-stone to another, while the stream of the 
story rushes past unregarded. The Bhagvat-Geeta is 
less sententious and poetic, perhaps, but still more 
wonderfully sustained and developed. Its sanity and 
sublimity have impressed the minds even of soldiers 
and merchants. It is the characteristic of great poems 
that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to 
the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical 
they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom ; 
as either the traveller may wet his lips, or an army 
may fill its water casks at a full stream. 

One of the most attractive of those ancient books 
that I have met with is the Laws of Menu. Accord- 
ing to Sir William Jones, '' Vyasa, the son of Parasara, 
has decided that the Veda, with its Angas, or the six 
compositions deduced from it, the revealed system of 
medicine, the Puranas, or sacred histories, and the 
code of Menu, were four works of supreme authority, 
which ought never to be shaken by arguments merely 



MONDA Y. 145 

human." The last is beHeved by the Hindoos "to 
have been promulgated in the beginning of time, by 
Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first of 
created beings " ; and Brahma is said to have " taught 
his laws to Menu in a hundred thousand verses, which 
Menu explained to the primitive world in the very 
words of the book now translated." Others affirm 
that they have undergone successive abridgments for 
the convenience of mortals, " while the gods of the 
lower heaven, and the band of celestial musicians, are 
engaged in studying the primary code." — "A num- 
ber of glosses or comments on Menu were composed 
by the Munis, or old philosophers, whose treatises, 
together with that before us, constitute the Dherma 
Sastra, in a collective sense, or Body of Law." Cul- 
luca Bhatta was one of the more modern of these. 

Every sacred book, successively, seems to have 
been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final 
resting-place of the sojourning soul ; but after all, it 
is but a caravansary which supplies refreshment to 
the traveller, and directs him farther on his way to 
Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyr- 
anny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we 
are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to 
any caste. 

I know of no book which has come dowm to us with 
grander pretensions than this, and it is so impersonal 
and sincere that it is never offensive nor ridiculous. 
Compare the modes in which modern literature is 
advertised with the prospectus of this book, and think 
what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it 
expects. It seems to have been uttered from some 
eastern summit, with a sober morning prescience in 
the dawn of time, and you cannot read a sentence 



146 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

without being elevated as upon the table-land of the 
Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the 
desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and is as supe- 
rior to criticism as the Himmaleh mountains. Its 
tone is of such unrelaxed fibre, that even at this late 
day, unworn by time, it wears the English and the 
Sanscrit dress indifferently, and its fixed sentences 
keep up their distant fires still like the stars, by whose 
dissipated rays this lower world is illumined. The 
whole book by noble gestures and inclinations seems 
to render many words unnecessary. English sense 
has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired. The 
sentences open, as we read them, unexpensively, and, 
at first, almost unmeaningly, as the petals of a flower, 
yet they sometimes startle us with that rare kind of 
wisdom which could only have been learned from the 
most trivial experience ; but it comes to us as refined 
as the porcelain earth which subsides to the bottom of 
the ocean. They are clean and dry as fossil truths, 
which have been exposed to the elements for thou- 
sands of years, so impersonally and scientifically true 
that they are the ornament of the parlor and the cabi- 
net. Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. 
This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. 
It is a more private and familiar, and, at the same 
time, a more public and universal word than is spoken 
in parlor or pulpit now-a-days. As our domestic 
fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheas- 
ant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their pro- 
totypes in the thoughts of her philosophers. We 
seem to be dabbling in the very elements of our pres- 
ent conventional and actual life ; as if it were the pri- 
meval conventicle where how to eat and to drink and 
to sleep, and maintain life with adequate dignity and 



MONDA Y. 147 

sincerity, were the questions to be decided. It is 
later and more intimate even than the advice of our 
nearest friends. And yet it is true for the widest 
horizon, and read out of doors has relation to the dim 
mountain line, and is native and aboriginal there. 
Most books belong to the house and street only, and 
in the fields their leaves feel very thin. They are 
bare and obvious, and have no halo nor haze about 
them. Nature lies far and fair behind them all. But 
this, as it proceeds from, so does it address what is 
deepest and most abiding in man. It belongs to the 
noontide of the day, the midsummer of the year, and 
after the snows have melted, and the waters evapo- 
rated in the spring, still its truth speaks freshly to our 
experience. It helps the sun to shine, and his rays 
fall on its page to illustrate it. It spends the morn- 
ings and the evenings, and makes such an impression 
on us over night as to awaken us before dawn, and its 
influence lingers around us like a fragrance late into 
the day. It conveys a new gloss to the meadows and 
the depths of the wood. Its spirit, like a more sub- 
tile ether, sweeps along with the prevailing winds of 
a country, and the very locusts and crickets of a sum- 
mer day are but later or earlier glosses on the Dherma 
Sastra of the Hindoos, a continuation of the sacred 
code. As we have said, there is an orientalism in 
the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but 
the farthest east. This fair modern world is only a 
reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Cul- 
luca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere 
practical wisdom of modern times, they are the ora- 
cles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the 
sky, which is the only impartial and incormptible 
ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, 



148 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and I am assured that they will have a place and sig- 
nificance as long as there is a sky to test them by. 

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can under- 
stand. There must be a kind of hfe and palpitation 
to it, and under its words a kind of blood must circu- 
late forever. It is wonderful that this sound should 
have come down to us from so far, when the voice of 
man can be heard so little way, and we are not now 
within ear-shot of any contemporary. The wood- 
cutters have here felled an ancient pine forest, and 
brought to light to these distant hills a fair lake in 
the south-west ; and now in an instant it is distinctly 
shown to these woods as if its image had travelled 
hither from eternity. Perhaps these old stumps upon 
the knoll remember when anciently this lake gleamed 
in the horizon. One wonders if the bare earth itself 
did not experience emotion at beholding again so fair 
a prospect. That fair water lies there in the sun thus 
revealed, so much the prouder and fairer because its 
beauty needed not to be seen. It seems yet lonely, 
sufficient to itself, and superior to observation. — So 
are these old sentences like serene lakes in the south- 
west, at length revealed to us, which have so long 
been reflecting our own sky in their bosom. 

The great plain of India lies as in a cup between 
the Himmaleh and the ocean on the north and south, 
and the Brahmapootra and Indus, on the east and 
west, wherein the primeval race was received. We 
will not dispute the story. We are pleased to read in 
the natural history of the country, of the '^pine, larch, 
spruce, and silver fir," which cover the southern face 
of the Himmaleh range ; of the " gooseberry, rasp- 
berry, strawberry," which from an imminent temperate 
zone overlook the torrid plains. So did this active 



MONDAY. 149 

modern life have even then a foothold and lurking 
place in the midst of the stateliness and contempla- 
tiveness of those eastern plains. In another era the 
" lily-of-the-valley, cowslip, dandelion," were to work 
their way down into the plain, and bloom in a level 
zone of their own reaching round the earth. Already 
has the era of the temperate zone arrived, the era of 
the pine and the oak, for the palm and the banian do 
not supply the wants of this age. The lichens on 
the summits of the rocks will perchance find their 
level ere long. 

As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so 
much concerned to know what doctrines they held, as 
that they were held by any. We can tolerate all 
philosophies, Atomists, Pneumatologists, Atheists, 
Theists, — Plato, Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, 
Pythagorus, Zoroaster, and Confucius. It is the atti- 
tude of these men, more than any communication 
which they make, that attracts us. Between these 
and their commentators, it is true, there is an endless 
dispute. But if it comes to this that you compare 
notes, then you are all wrong. As it is, each takes us 
up into the serene heavens, whither the smallest 
bubble rises as surely as the largest, and paints earth 
and sky for us. Any sincere thought is irresistible. 
The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to 
the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler 
luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied 
seem like a more refined pleasure. Their conception 
of creation is peaceful as a dream. "When that 
power awakes, then has this world its full expansion ; 
but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the 
whole system fades away." In the very indistinct- 
ness of their theogony a sublime truth is implied. It 



150 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

hardly allows the reader to rest in any supreme first 
cause, but directly it hints at a supremer still which 
created the last, and the Creator is still behind 
increate. 

Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture ; 
"From fire, from air, and from the sun," it was 
"• milked out." One might as well investigate the 
chronology of light and heat. Let the sun shine. 
Menu understood this matter best, when he said, 
" Those best know the divisions of days and nights 
who understand that the day of Brahma, which 
endures to the end of a thousand such ages, [infinite 
ages, nevertheless, according to mortal reckoning,] 
gives rise to virtuous exertions ; and that his night 
endures as long as his day."" Indeed, the Mussulman 
and Tartar dynasties are beyond all dating. Methinks 
I have lived under them myself. In every man's 
brain is the Sanscrit. The Vedas and their Angas 
are not so ancient as serene contemplation. Why 
will we be imposed on by antiquity ? Is the babe 
young? When I behold it, it seems more vener- 
able than the oldest man ; it is more ancient 
than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles 
of father Saturn himself. And do we live but in 
the present ? How broad a line is that .'' I sit 
now on a stump whose rings number centuries of 
growth. If I look around I see that the soil is 
composed of the remains of just such stumps, ances- 
tors to this. The earth is covered with mould. I 
thrust this stick many aeons deep into its surface, 
and with my heel make a deeper furrow than the 
elements have ploughed here for a thousand years. 
If I listen, I hear the peep of frogs which is older 
than the slime of Egypt, and the distant drumming of 



MO NBA Y. 151 

a partridge on a log, as if it were the pulse-beat of the 
summer air. I raise my fairest and freshest flowers 
in the old mould. Why, what we would fain call 
new is not skin deep ; the earth is not yet stained by it. 
It is not the fertile ground which we walk on, but the 
leaves that flutter over our heads. The newest is 
but the oldest made visible to our senses. When 
we dig up the soil from a thousand feet below the 
surface, we call it new, and the plants which spring 
from it ; and when our vision pierces deeper into 
space, and detects a remoter star, we call that new 
also. The place where we sit is called Hudson, — 
once it was Nottingham, — once — 

We should read history as little critically as we 
consider the landscape, and be more interested by 
the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades 
which the intervening spaces create, than by its 
groundwork and composition. It is the morning 
now turned evening and seen in the west, — the same 
sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is 
like the sunset ; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat 
and bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free. 
In reality, history fluctuates as the face of the land- 
scape from morning to evening. What is of moment 
is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures ; we 
want not its iheii^ but its now. We do not complain 
that the mountains in the horizon are blue and indis- 
tinct ; they are the more like the heavens. 

Of what moment are facts that can be lost, — 
which need to be commemorated? The monument 
of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The 
pyramids do not tell us the tale that was confided to 
them ; the living fact commemorates itself. Why 



152 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

look in the dark for light? Strictly speaking, the 
historical societies have not recovered one fact from 
oblivion, but are themselves, instead of the fact, that 
is lost. The researcher is more memorable than the 
researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist and 
the dim outlines of the trees seen through it, when 
one of their number advanced to explore the phenome- 
non, and with fresh admiration all eyes were turned 
on his dimly retreating figure. It is astonishing with 
how little cooperation of the societies, the past is 
remembered. Its story has indeed had another 
muse than has been assigned it. There is a good 
instance of the manner in which all history began, in 
Alwakidis' Arabian Chronicle, "I was informed by 
Alwied Ahnatin Aljorhami, who had it from Rephcia 
Ebn Kais Aldmiri, who had it from Saiph Ebn 
Fabalah Alchdtquarjm, who had it from Thabet Ebfi 
Alkamah, who said he was present at the action." 
These fathers of history were not anxious to preserve, 
but to learn the fact ; and hence it was not forgotten. 
Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the 
past; \hQ. past cannot ht prese?ited ; we cannot know 
what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, 
and future, and it is the province of the historian to 
find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has 
been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men 
and beasts ; where a battle is being fought, there are 
hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, 
and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs 
again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they 
were men, or not rather that they are bones? 

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should 
be more modern. It is written as if the spectator 
should be thinking of the backside of the picture on 



MONDAY. 153 

the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead 
would be his readers, and wished to detail to them 
their own experience. Men seem anxious to accom- 
plish an orderly retreat through the centuries, ear- 
nestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered 
down by the encroachments of time ; but while they 
loiter, they and their works both fall a prey to the 
arch enemy. History has neither the venerableness 
of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It 
does as if it would go to the beginning of things, 
which natural history might with reason assume to 
do ; but consider the Universal History, and then tell 
us — when did burdock and plantain sprout first ? It 
has been so written for the most part, that the times 
it describes are with remarkable propriety called dai'k 
ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because 
we are so in the dark about them. The sun rarely 
shines in history, what with the dust and confusion ; 
and when we meet with any cheering fact which 
implies the presence of this luminary, we excerpt and 
modernize it. As when we read in the history of the 
Saxons that Edwin of Northumbria "caused stakes to 
be fixed in the highways where he had seen a clear 
spring," and "brazen dishes were chained to them, to 
refresh the weary sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin 
had himself experienced." This is worth all Arthur's 
twelve battles. 

" Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger 
day : 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." 
Than fifty years of Europe better one New England ray ! 

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection ; it 
should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Ger- 



154 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

mans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our 
bovi^els that we may be somebody else to explain 
him. If I am not I, w^ho will be ? 

But it is fit that the Past should be dark ; though 
the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as 
of tradition. It is not a distance of time, but a dis- 
tance of relation, which makes thus dusky its me- 
morials. What is near to the heart of this generation 
is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair 
and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun 
and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does 
not allow us to forget that the sun shone, — nor 
Phidias, nor the Parthenon. Yet no era has been 
wholly dark, nor will we too hastily submit to the 
historian, and congratulate ourselves on a blaze of 
light. If we could pierce the obscurity of those re- 
mote years, we should find it light enough ; only thej'e 
is not our day. Some creatures are made to see in 
the dark. There has always been the same amount 
of light in the world. The new and missing stars, 
the comets and eclipses, do not affect the general 
illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them. 
The eyes of the oldest fossil remains, they tell us, 
indicate that the same laws of light prevailed then as 
now. Always the laws of light are the same, but the 
modes and degrees of seeing vary. The gods are 
partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the 
heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to 
stone. There was but the sun and the eye from the 
first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, 
nor altered a fibre of the other. 

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the 
mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks 
of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance, still 



MONDAY. 155 

reflecting some of their original splendor, like the 
fragments of clouds tinted by the rays of the departed 
sun ; reaching into the latest summer day, and allying 
this hour to the morning of creation; as the poet 
sings : — 

" Fragments of the lofty strain 
Float down the tide of years, 
As buoyant on the stormy main 
A parted wreck appears ; " — 

these are the materials and hints for a history of the 
rise and progress of the race ; how, from the condi- 
tion of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and 
arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand sur- 
mises shed some light on this story. We will not be 
confined by historical, even geological periods, which 
would allow us to doubt of a progress in human 
affairs. If we rise above this wisdom for the day, we 
shall expect that this morning of the race, in which 
it has been supplied with the simplest necessaries, 
with corn, and wine, and honey, and oil, and fire, and 
articulate speech, and agricultural and other arts, 
reared up, by degrees, from the condition of ants, to 
men, will be succeeded by a day of equally progres- 
sive splendor ; that, in the lapse of the divine periods, 
other divine agents and godlike men will assist to 
elevate the race as much above its present condition. 
But we do not know much about it. 

Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while his 
companion slumbered on the bank. Suddenly, a 
boatman's horn was heard, echoing from shore to 
shore, to give notice of his approach to the farmer's 
wife, with whom he was to take his dinner, though in 



156 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

that place only muskrats and king-fishers seemed to 
hear. The current of our reflections and our slum- 
bers being thus disturbed, we weighed anchor once 
more. 

As we proceeded on our way in the afternoon, the 
western bank became lower, or receded further from 
the channel in some places, leaving a few trees only 
to fringe the water's edge ; while the eastern rose ab- 
ruptly here and there into wooded hOls fifty or sixty 
feet high. The bass, tilia Americana, also called 
the lime or linden, which was a new tree to us, over- 
hung the water with its broad and rounded leaf, inter- 
spersed with clusters of small hard berries, now nearly 
ripe, and made an agreeable shade for us sailors. 
The inner bark of this genus is the bast, the material 
of the fisherman's matting, and the ropes, and peas- 
ant's shoes, of which the Russians make so much use, 
and also of nets and a coarse cloth in some places. 
According to poets, this was once Philyra, one of the 
Oceanides. The ancients are said to have used its 
bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a 
kind of paper called Philyra. They also made buck- 
lers of its wood, '' on account of its flexibility, light- 
ness, and resiliency." It was once much used for 
carving, and is still in demand for panels of carriages, 
and for various uses for which toughness and flexibil- 
ity are required. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey 
made from its flowers is said to be preferred to any 
other. Its leaves are in some countries given to 
cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made of its fruit, 
a medicine has been prepared from an infusion of its 
flowers, and finally, the charcoal made of its wood is 
greatly valued for gunpowder. 

The sight of this tree reminded us that we had 



MONDAY. 157 

reached a strange land to us. As we sailed under 
this canopy of leaves we saw the sky through its 
chinks, and, as it were, the meaning and idea of the 
tree stamped in a thousand hieroglyphics on the 
heavens. The universe is so aptly fitted to our organ- 
ization, that the eye wanders and reposes at the same 
time. On every side there is something to soothe 
and refresh this sense. Look up at the tree-tops and 
see how finely Nature finishes off her work there. See 
how the pines spire without end higher and higher, 
and make a graceful fringe to the earth. And who 
shall count the finer cobwebs that soar and float away 
from their utmost tops, and the myriad insects that 
dodge between them. Leaves are of more various 
forms than the alphabets of all languages put together ; 
of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and each 
expresses its own character. 

In all her products Nature only develops her sim- 
plest germs. One would say that it was no great 
stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk, which 
now takes his flight over the top of the wood, was at 
first perchance only a leaf which fluttered in its 
aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course 
of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the 
bird. 

Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the 
railroad, a mile and a half below the village of Nashua. 
We rode up far enough into the meadows which bor- 
der it, to learn its piscatorial history from a hay-maker 
on its banks. He told us that the silver eel was 
formerly abundant here, and pointed to some sunken 
creels at'its mouth. This man's memory and imagin- 
ation were fertile in fishermen's tales of floating isles 
in bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously stocked 



158 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

with fishes, and would have kept us till night-fall to 
listen, but we could not afford to loiter in this road- 
stead, and so stood out to our sea again. Though we 
never trod in these meadows, but only touched their 
margin with our hands, we still retain a pleasant 
memory of them. 

Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a transla- 
tion from the Indian, was a favorite haunt of the 
aborigines. Here too the first white settlers of Nashua 
planted, and some dents in the earth, where their 
houses stood, and the wrecks of ancient apple trees, 
are still visible. About one mile up this stream stood 
the house of old John Lovewell, who was an ensign 
in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and the father of 
"famous Captain Lovewell. '' He settled here before 
1690, and died about 1754, at the age of one hundred 
and twenty years. He is thought to have been 
engaged in the famous Narragansett swamp fight, 
which took place in 1675, before he came here. The 
Indians are said to have spared him in succeeding wars 
on account of his kindness to them. Even in 1700 he 
was so old and gray-headed that his scalp was worth 
nothing, since the French Governor offered no bounty 
for such. I have stood in the dent of his cellar on 
the bank of the brook, and talked there with one 
whose grandfather had, whose father might have, 
talked with Lovewell. Here also he had a mill in his 
old age, and kept a small store. He was remembered 
by some who were recently living, as a hale old man 
who drove the boys out of his orchard with his cane. 
— Consider the triumphs of the mortal man, and what 
poor trophies it would have to show, to wit, He cob- 
bled shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cut a 
handsome swathe at a hundred and five! — LovewelPs 



MONDAY. i^Q 

house is said to have been the first which Mrs. Dus- 
tin reached on her escape from the Indians. Here 
probably the hero of Pequawket was born and bred. 
Close by may be seen the cellar and the gravestone 
of Joseph Hassell, who, as was elsewhere recorded, 
with his wife Anna and son Benjamin, and Mary 
Marks, " were slain by our Indian enemies on Sept. 
2d [1691] in the evening." As Gookin observed on 
a previous occasion, "The Indian rod upon the Eng- 
lish backs had not yet done God's errand." Salmoli 
Brook near its mouth is still a solitary stream, mean- 
denng through woods and meadows, while the then 
unmhabited mouth of the Nashua now resounds with 
the din of a manufacturing town. 

A stream from Otternic pond in Hudson comes in just 
above Salmon Brook, on the opposite side. There 
was a good view of Uncannunuc, the most conspicu- 
ous mountain in these parts, from the bank here, 
seen rising over the west end of the bridge above. We 
soon after passed the village of Nashua, on the river of 
the same name, where there is a covered bridge over the 
Merrimack. The Nashua, which is one of the largest 
tributaries, flows from Wachusett mountain, through 
Lancaster, Groton, and other towns, where it has 
formed well-known elm-shaded meadows, but near its 
mouth it is obstructed by falls and factories, and did 
not tempt us to explore it. 

Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another 
companion, I have crossed the broad valley of the 
Nashua, over which we had so long looked westward 
from the Concord hills without seeing it to the blue 
mountains in the horizon. So many streams, so many 
meadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men had 
Iain concealed between us and those Delectable 



l60 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Mountains ; — from yonder hill on the road to Tyngs- 
boro' you may get a good view of them. — There 
where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our youthful 
eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon, 
lay the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was 
even then winding at its bottom, and then, as now, 
it was here silently mingling its waters with the Merri- 
mack. The clouds which floated over its meadows 
and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded by 
the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand 
evening skies for us. But as it were by a turf wall 
this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those 
hills it was first gradually revealed to us. Summer 
and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of 
the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness 
lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to 
interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers. 
Standing on the Concord Cliffs we thus spoke our 
mind to them : — 

With frontier strength ye stand your ground, 

With grand content ye circle round, 

Tumultous silence for all sound, 

Ye distant nursery of rills, 

Monadnock and the Peterboro' hills ; — 

Firm argument that never stirs, 

Outcircling the philosophers, — 

Like some vast fleet. 

Sailing through rain and sleet. 

Through winter's cold and summer's heat ; 

Still holding on upon your high emprise. 

Until ye find a shore amid the skies ; 

Not skulking close to land, 

With cargo contraband, 

For they who sent a venture out by ye 

Have set the Sun to see 

Their honesty. 



MONDAY, l6] 

Ships of the line, each one, 

Ye westward run, 

Convoying clouds, i 

Which cluster in your shrouds, 

Always before the gale, 

Under a press of sail, 

With weight of metal all untold, — 

I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here, 

Immeasurable depth of hold, 

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear. 

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure 

In your novel western leisure ; 

So cool your brows and freshly blue, 

As Time had naught for ye to do ; 

For ye lie at your length, 

An unappropriated strength. 

Unhewn primeval timber, 

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber ; 

The stock of which new earths are made, 

One day to be our western trade. 

Fit for the stanchions of a world 

Which through the seas of space is hurled. 

While we enjoy a lingering ray, 

Ye still o'ertop the western day, 

Reposing yonder on God's croft 

Like solid stacks of hay ; 

So bold a line as ne'er was writ 

On any page by human wit ; 

The forest glows as if 

An enemy's camp-fires shone 

Along the horizon. 

Or the day's funeral pyre 

Were lighted there ; 

Edged with silver and with gold, 

The clouds hang o'er in damask fold, 

And with such depth of amber light 

The west is dight, 

Where still a few rays slant. 



1 62 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

That even Heaven seems extravagant. 

Watatic Hill 

Lies on the horizon's sill 

Like a child's toy left over night, 

And other duds to left and right, 

On the earth's edge, mountains and trees, 

Stand as they were on air graven. 

Or as the vessels in a haven 

Await the morning breeze. 

I fancy even 

Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven ; 

And yonder still, in spite of history's page, 

Linger the golden and the silver age ; 

Upon the laboring gale 

The news of future centuries is brought. 

And of new dynasties of thought. 

From your remotest vale. 

But special I remember thee, 

Wachusett, who hke me 

Standest alone without society. 

Thy far blue eye, 

A remnant of the sky, 

Seen through the clearing or the gorge, 

Or from the windows of the forge. 

Doth leaven all it passes by. 

Nothing is true 

But stands 'tween me and you. 

Thou western pioneer. 

Who know'st not shame nor fear, 

By venturous spirit driven 

Under the eaves of heaven ; 

And can'st expand thee there. 

And breathe enough of air ? 

Even beyond the West 

Thou migratest, 

Into unclouded tracts. 

Without a pilgrim's axe. 

Cleaving thy road on high 

With thy well-tempered brow, 



MONDA V. 163 

And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky. 

Upholding heaven, holding down earth, 

Thy pastime from thy birth ; 

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other, 

May I approve myself thy worthy brother ! 

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of 
happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall 
which bounded the western horizon, though not with- 
out misgivings that thereafter no visible fairy land 
would exist for us. But it would be long to tell of our 
adventures, and we have no time this afternoon, trans- 
porting ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua 
valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We have 
since made many similar excursions to the principal 
mountains of New England and New York, and even 
far in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the 
summit of many of them. And now when we look 
again westward from our native hills, Wachusett and 
Monadnock have retreated once more among the blue 
and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our 
eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, where 
we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled our 
hasty-pudding amid the clouds. 

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north 
side of the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and 
gristly forests between this frontier and Canada. In 
September of that year, two men who were engaged 
in making turpentine on that side, for such were the 
first enterprises in the wilderness, were taken captive 
and carried to Canada by a party of thirty Indians. 
Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable going to look for 
them, found the hoops of their barrel cut, and the tur- 
pentine spread on the ground. I have been told by 



1 64 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

an inhabitant of Tyngsboro', who had the story from 
his ancestors, that one of these captives, when the 
Indians were about to upset his barrel of turpentine, 
seized a pine knot and, flourishing it, swore so reso- 
lutely that he would kill the first who touched it, that 
they refrained, and when at length he returned from 
Canada he found it still standing. Perhaps there was 
more than one barrel. — However this may have been, 
the scouts knew by marks on the trees, made with 
coal mixed with grease, that the men were not killed, 
but taken prisoners. One of the company, named 
Farwell, perceiving that the turpentine had not done 
spreading, concluded that the Indians had been gone 
but a short time, and they accordingly went in instant 
pursuit. Contrary to the advice of Farwell, follow- 
ing directly on their trail up the Merrimack, they fell 
into an ambuscade near Thornton's Ferry, in the pres- 
ent town of Merrimack, and nine were killed, only one, 
Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. The men 
of Dunstable went out and picked up their bodies, 
and carried them all down to Dunstable and buried 
them. It is almost word for word as in the Robin 
Hood ballad : — 

" They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham, 

As many there did know, 
They digg'd them graves in their churchyard, 
And they buried them all a row." 

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and 
they were not exactly all a-row. You may read in 
the churchyard at Dunstable, under the " Memento 
Mori," and the name of one of them, how they " de- 
parted this life," and 



MONDAY. 165 

" This man with seven more that lies in 

this grave was slew all in a day by 

the Indians." 

The stones of some others of the company stand 
around the common grave with their separate inscrip- 
tions. Eight were buried here, but nine were killed, 
according to the best authorities. 

" Gentle river, gentle river, 

Lo, thy streams are stained with gore. 
Many a brave and noble captain 
Floats along thy willowed shore. 

All beside thy limpid waters. 

All beside thy sands so bright, 
Indian Chiefs and Christian warriors 

Joined in fierce and mortal fight," 

It is related in the history of Dunstable, that on 
the return of Farwell the Indians were engaged by a 
fresh party, which they compelled to retreat, and pur- 
sued as far as the Nashua, where they fought across 
the stream at its mouth. After the departure of the 
Indians, the figure of an Indian's head was found 
carved by them on a large tree by the shore, which 
circumstance has given its name to this part of the 
village of Nashville, — the " Indian Head." " It was 
observed by some judicious," says Gookin, referring 
to Philip's war, " that at the beginning of the war, the 
English soldiers made a nothing of the Indians, and 
many spake words to this effect ; that one Englishman 
was sufficient to chase ten Indians ; many reckoned it 
was no other but Veni^ vidi, vict^ But we may 
conclude that the judicious would by this time have 
made a different observation. 



1 66 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Farwell appears to have been the only one who had 
studied his profession, and understood the business 
of liunting Indians. He lived to fight another day, 
for the next year he was Lovewell's Lieutenant at 
Pequawket, but that time, as we have related, left his 
bones in the wilderness. His name still reminds us 
of twilight days and forest scouts on Indian trails, 
with an uneasy scalp ; — an indispensable hero to 
New England. As the more recent poet of Love- 
well's fight has sung, halting a little but bravely 
still; — 

" Then did the crimson streams that flowed, 
Seem like the waters of the brook, 
That brightly shine, that loudly dash. 
Far down the cliffs of Agiochook." 

These battles sound incredible to us. I think pos- 
terity will doubt if such things ever were ; if our bold 
ancestors who settled this land were not struggling 
rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper 
colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and 
ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrow- 
heads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, 
the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so 
shadowy and unreal. 

It is a wild and antiquated looking grave-yard, 
overgrown with bushes, on the high road, about a 
quarter of a mile from and overlooking the Merri- 
mack, with a deserted mill stream bounding it on one 
side, where lie the earthly remains of the ancient in- 
habitants of Dunstable. We passed it three or four 
miles below here. You may read there the names of 
Lovewell, Farwell, and many others whose families 



MONDAY. 167 

were distinguished in Indian warfare. We noticed 
there two large masses of granite more than a foot 
thick and rudely squared, lying flat on the ground 
over the remains of the first pastor and his wife. 

It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under 
stones, — 

" Strata jacent passim suo quaeque sub " lapide — 

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. When 
the stone is a slight one, and stands upright, pointing 
to the skies, it does not oppress the spirits of the trav- 
eller to meditate by it ; but these did seem a little 
heathenish to us ; and so are all large monuments 
over men's bodies, from the pyramids down. A monu- 
ment should at least be " star-y-pointing," to indi- 
cate whither the spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like 
the body it has deserted. There have been some 
nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, 
and these are the only traces which they have left. 
They are the heathen. But why these stones, so up- 
right and emphatic, like exclamation points! What 
was there so remarkable that lived ? Why should the 
monument be so much more enduring than the fame 
which it is designed to commemorate, — a stone to a 
bone? "Here lies," — "Here hes"; — why do they 
not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument 
to the body only that is intended? " Having reached 
the term of his natural life ; " — would it not be 
truer to say. Having reached the term of his unnatu- 
ral life? The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. 
If any character is given it should be as severely 
true as the decision of the three judges below, and 
not the partial testimony of friends. Friends and 



1 68 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

contemporaries should supply only the name and 
date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph. 

Here lies an honest man, 
Rear-Admiral Van. 



Faith, then ye have 

Two in one grave, 

For in his favor, 

Here too lies the Engraver. 

Fame itself is but an epitaph ; as late, as false, as 
true. But they only are the true epitaphs which Old 
Mortality retouches. 

A man might well pray that he may not taboo or 
curse any portion of nature by being buried in it. 
For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a 
fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is therefore 
much to the credit of Little John, the famous follower 
of Robin Hood, that his grave was " long celebrous 
for the yielding of excellent whetstones." I confess 
that I have but little love for such collections as they 
have at the Catacombs, Pere la Chaise, Mount Au- 
burn, and even this Dunstable grave-yard. At any 
rate, nothing but great antiquity can make grave-yards 
interesting to me. I have no friends there. It may 
be that I am not competent to write the poetry of the 
grave. The farmer who has skimmed his farm might 
perchance leave his body to Nature to be plowed in, 
and in some measure restore its fertility. We should 
not retard but forward her economies. 

Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and 
the woods were gained again, and we rowed slowly 
on before sunset, looking for a solitary place in which 



MONDAY. 169 

to spend the night. A few evening clouds began to 
be reflected in the water, and the surface was dimpled 
only here and there by a muskrat crossing the stream. 
We camped at length near Penichook Brook, on the 
confines of Nashville, by a deep ravine, under the 
skirts of a pine wood, where the dead pine leaves 
were our carpet, and their tawny boughs stretched 
over head. But fire and smoke soon tamed the 
scene ; the rocks consented to be our walls, and 
the pines our roof. A woodside was already the 
fittest locality for us. 

The wilderness is near, as well as dear, to every 
man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the 
border of wild wood which surrounds them, more 
than to the gardens of men. There is something 
indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect 
of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into 
the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps 
of fresh fox burrows, have sprung up in their midst. 
The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts 
the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives 
need the relief of such a background, where the pine 
flourishes and the jay still screams. 

We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as 
the sun was setting carried up our furniture, and soon 
arranged our house upon the bank, and while the 
kettle steamed at the tent door, we chatted of dis- 
tant friends, and of the sights we were to behold, 
and wondered which way the towns lay from us. Our 
cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set upon our chest, 
and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs, 
with our talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the 
ground, and read in the gazetteer when the first settlers 
came here and got a township granted. Then, when 



I/O A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

supper was done, and we had written the journal of 
our voyage, we wrapped our buffaloes about us, and 
lay down with our heads pillowed on our arms, listen- 
ing awhile to the distant baying of a dog, or the mur- 
murs of the river, or to the wind, which had not gone 
to rest, — 

The western wind came lumbering in, 
Bearing a faint Pacific din, 
Our evening mail, swift at the call 
Of its Post-Master General ; 
Laden with news fiom Californ', 
Whate'er transpired hath since morn, 
How wags the world by brier and brake 
From hence to Athabasca lake ; — 

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which 
glimmered through our cotton roof. Perhaps at mid- 
night one was awakened by a cricket shrilly singing 
on his shoulder, or by a hunting spider in his eye, and 
was lulled asleep again by some streamlet purling its 
way along at the bottom of a wooded and rocky ravine 
in our neighborhood. It was pleasant to lie with our 
heads so low in the grass, and hear what a tinkling 
ever-busy laboratory it was. A thousand little arti- 
sans beat on their anvils all night long. 

Far in the night, as we were falling asleep on the 
bank of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a 
drum incessantly, in preparation for a country muster, 
as we learned, and we thought of the line, 

" When the drum beat at dead of night." 

We could have assured him that his beat would be 
answered, and the forces be mustered. Fear not, thou 
drummer of the night, we too will be there. And still 
he drummed on in the silence and the dark. This 



MONDAY. 171 

stray sound from a far-off sphere came to our ears 
from time to time, far, sweet, and significant, and 
we listened with such an unprejudiced sense as if 
for the first time we heard at all. No doubt he was 
an insignificant drummer enough, but his music 
afforded us a prime and leisure hour, and we felt 
that we were in season wholly. These simple sounds 
related us to the stars. Aye, there was a logic in them 
so convincing that the combined sense of mankind 
could never make me doubt their conclusions. I 
stop my habitual thinking, as if the plow had suddenly 
run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world. 
How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a 
bottomless skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly 
old Time winked at me, — Ah you know me, you rogue, 
— and news had come that it was well. That ancient 
universe is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly 
it will never die. Heal yourselves, doctors ; by God 
I live. — 

Then idle Time ran gadding by 
And left me with Eternity alone ; 
I hear beyond the range of sound, 
I see beyond the verge of sight, — 

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Some- 
thing to which we are allied, at once our maker, our 
abode, our destiny, our very Selves ; the one historic 
truth, the most remarkable fact which can become 
the distinct and uninvited subject of our thought, the 
actual glory of the universe ; the only fact which a 
human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way 
forget or dispense with. — 

It doth expand my privacies 
To all, and leave me single in the crowd. 



172 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, 
and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a 
good while. 

Now chiefly is my natal hour, 

And only now my prime of life. 

I will not doubt the love untold, 

Which not my worth nor want hath bought, 

Which wooed me young and wooes me old, 

And to this evening hath me brought. 

What are ears ? what is Time ? that this particular 
series of sounds called a strain of music, an invisible 
and fairy troop which never brushed the dew from 
any mead, can be wafted down through the centuries 
from Homer to me, and he have been conversant with 
that same aerial and mysterious charm which now so 
tingles my ears? What a fine communication from 
age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the 
aspirations of ancient men, even such as w-ere never 
communicated by speech ! It is the flower of language, 
thought colored and curved, fluent and flexible, its 
crystal fountain tinged with the sun's rays, and its 
purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds. 
A strain of music reminds me of a passage of the 
Vedas, and I associate with it the idea of infinite 
remoteness, as well as of beauty and serenity, for to 
the senses that is furthest from us which addresses the 
greatest depth within us. It teaches us again and 
again to trust the remotest and finest as the divinest 
instinct, and makes a dream our only real experience. 
As polishing expresses the vein in marble and grain 
in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks any- 
where. The hero is the sole patron of music. That 
harmony which exists naturally between the hero's 



MONDAY. 173 

moods and the universe the soldier would fain imitate 
with drum and trumpet. When we are in health all 
sounds fife and drum for us ; we hear the notes of 
music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when 
we awake in the dawn. Marching is when the pulse 
of the hero beats in unison with the pulse of Nature, 
and he steps to the measure of the universe ; then 
there is true courage and invincible strength. 

Plutarch says that " Plato thinks the gods never gave 
men music, the science of melody and harmony, for 
mere delectation or to tickle the ear; but that the 
discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous 
fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about the 
body, and many times, for want of tune and air, 
breaks forth into many extravagances and excesses, 
might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to 
their former consent and agreement." 

Music is the sound of the universal laws promul- 
gated. It is the only assured tone. There are in 
it such strains as far surpass any man's faith in the 
loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned 
which it will be worth the while to learn. Formerly I 
heard these 

RUMORS FROM AN ^OLIAN HARP. 

There is a vale which none hath seen, 
Where foot of man has never been, 
Such as here lives with toil and strife, 
An anxious and a sinful life. 

There every virtue has its birth, 
Ere it descends upon the earth. 
And thither every deed returns, 
Which in the generous bosom burns. 

There love is warm, and youth is young, 
And poetry is yet unsung. 



174 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

For Virtue still adventures there, 
And freely breathes her native air. 

And ever, if you hearken well, 
You still may hear its vesper bell, 
And tread of high-souled men go by. 
Their thoughts conversing with the sky. 

According to Jamblicluis, '' Pythagoras did not pro- 
cure for himself a thing of this kind through instru- 
ments or the voice, but employing a certain ineffable 
divinity, and which it is difficult to apprehend, he ex- 
tended his ears and fixed his intellect in the sublime 
symphonies of the world, he alone hearing and under- 
standing, as it appears, the universal harmony and 
consonance of the spheres, and the stars that are 
moved through them, and which produce a fuller and 
more intense melody than anything effected by mortal 
sounds.'" 

Travelling on foot very early one morning due east 
from here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman's 
tavern in Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reached 
the railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a 
faint music in the air like an yEolian harp, which I 
immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of 
the telegraph vibrating in the just awakening morning 
wind, and applying my ear to one of the posts I was 
convinced that it was so. It was the telegraph harp 
singing its message through the country, its message 
sent not by men but by gods. Perchance, like the 
statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning 
when the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like 
the first lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore, — that 
vibrating cord high in the air over the shores of earth. 
So have all things their higher and their lower uses. 
I heard a fairer news than the journals ever print. It 



MONDA Y. 



175 



told of things worthy to hear, and worthy of the 
electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the price of 
cotton and flour, but it hinted at the price of the 
world itself and of things which are priceless, of 
absolute truth and beauty. 

Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to 
fresh extravagance that night. The clarion sound 
and clang of corselet and buckler were heard from 
many a hamlet of the soul, and many a knight was 
arming for the fight behind the encamped stars. — 

" Before each van 
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears 
Till thickest legions close ; with feats of arms 
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns." 



Away! away! away! away! 

Ye have not kept your secret well, 
I will abide that other day, 

Those other lands ye tell. 

Has time no leisure left for these, 

The acts that ye rehearse ? 
Is not eternity a lease 

For better deeds than verse ? 

T is sweet to hear of heroes dead, 

To know them still alive. 
But sweeter if we earn their bread. 

And in us they survive. 

Our life should feed the springs of fame 

With a perennial wave, 
As ocean feeds the babbhng founts 

Which find in it their grave. 

Ye skies drop gently round my breast. 

And be my corselet blue, 
Ye earth receive my lance in rest. 

My faithful charger you ; 



176 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, 

My arrow-tips ye are, — 
I see the routed foemen fly, 

My bright spears fixed are. 

Give me an angel for a foe, 

Fix now the place and time. 
And straight to meet him I will go 

Above the starry chime. 

And with our clashing bucklers' clang 
The heavenly spheres shall ring, 

While bright the northern lights shall hang 
Beside our tourneying. 

And if she lose her champion true, 

Tell Heaven not despair, 
For I will be her champion new. 

Her fame I will repair. , 

There was a high wind this night, which we after- 
wards learned had been still more violent elsewhere, 
and had done much injury to the cornfields far and 
near ; but we only heard it sigh from time to time, as 
if it had no license to shake the foundations of our 
tent ; the pines murmured, the water rippled, and the 
tent rocked a little, but we only laid our ears closer 
to the ground, while the blast swept on to alarm other 
men, and long before sunrise we were ready to pursue 
our voyage as usual. 



TUESDAY. 

" On either side the river he 
Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
And thro' the fields the road runs by 

To many-towered Camelot." 

Tennyson. 

Long before daylight we ranged abroad with hatchet 
in hand, in search of fuel, and made the yet slumber- 
ing and dreaming wood resound with our blows. 
Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the loi- 
tering night, while the kettle sang its homely strain 
to the morning star. We tramped about the shore, 
waked all the muskrats, and scared up the bittern and 
birds that were asleep upon their roosts ; we hauled 
up and upset our boat, and washed it and rinsed out 
the clay, talking aloud as if it were broad day, until at 
length, by three o^clock, we had completed our prepa- 
rations and were ready to pursue our voyage as usual ; 
so, shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into the 
fog. 

Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we 
trusted that there was a bright day behind it. 

Ply the oars ! away ! away ! 
In each dew-drop of the morning 

Lies the promise of a day. 
Rivers from the sunrise flow, 

Springing with the dewy morn ; 
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row, 
Idle noon nor sunset know, 

Ever even with the dawn, 

^77 



178 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Belknap, the historian of this State, says that "In the 
neighborhood of fresh rivers and ponds, a whitish 
fog in the morning, lying over the water, is a sure in- 
dication of fair weather for that day ; and when no 
fog is seen, rain is expected before night." That 
which seemed to us to invest the world, was only a 
narrow and shallow wreath of vapor stretched over 
the channel of the Merrimack from the sea-board to 
the mountains. More extensive fogs, however, have 
their own limits. I once saw the day break from the 
top of Saddle-back Mountain in Massachusetts, above 
the clouds. As we cannot distinguish objects through 
this dense fog, let me tell this story more at length. 

I had come over the hills on foot and alone in se- 
rene summer days, plucking the raspberries by the 
wayside, and occasionally buying a loaf of bread at a 
farmer's house, with a knapsack on my back, which 
held a few traveller's books and a change of clothing, 
and a staff in my hand. I had that morning looked 
down from the Hoosack Mountain, where the road 
crosses it, on the village of North Adams in the val- 
ley, three miles away under my feet, showing how un- 
even the earth may sometimes be, and making it seem 
an accident that it should ever be level and conven- 
ient for the feet of man. Putting a little rice and 
sugar and a tin cup into my knapsack at this village, 
I began in the afternoon to ascend the mountain, 
whose summit is three thousand six hundred feet 
above the level of the sea, and was seven or eight 
miles distant by the path. My route lay up a long 
and spacious valley called the Bellows, because the 
winds rush up or down it with violence in storms, 
sloping up to the very clouds betv/een the principal 



TUESDAY. lyg 

range and a lower mountain. There were a few farms 
scattered along at different elevations, each command- 
ing a fine prospect of the mountains to the north, and 
a stream ran down the middle of the valley, on which 
near the head there was a mill. It seemed a road for 
the pilgrim to enter upon who would climb to the 
gates of heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, and now 
over the brook on a slight bridge, still gradually as- 
cending all the while, with a sort of awe, and filled 
with indefinite expectations as to what kind of inhabi- 
tants and what kind of nature I should come to at last. 
It now seemed some advantage that the earth was un- 
even, for one could not imagine a more noble position 
for a farm-house than this vale aiTorded, further from 
or nearer to its head, from a glen-like seclusion over- 
looking the country at a great elevation between these 
two mountain walls. 

It reminded me of the homesteads of the Huguenots 
on Staten Island, off the coast of New Jersey. The 
hills in the interior of this island, though compara- 
tively low, are penetrated in various directions by 
similar sloping valleys on a humble scale, gradually 
narrowing and rising to the centre, and at the head of 
these the Huguenots, who were the first settlers, placed 
their houses, quite within the land, in rural and shel- 
tered places, in leafy recesses where the breeze played 
with the poplar and the gum tree, from which, with equal 
security in calm and storm, they looked out through a 
widening vista, over miles of forest and stretching 
salt marsh, to the Huguenots' Tree, an old elm on the 
shore at whose root they had landed, and across the 
spacious outer bay of New York to Sandy Hook and 
the Highlands of Neversink, and thence over leagues 
of the Atlantic, perchance to some faint vessel in the 



l80 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

horizon, almost a day's sail on her voyage to that 
Europe whence they had come. When walking in 
the interior there, in the midst of rural scenery, where 
there was as little to remind me of the ocean as amid 
the New Hampshire hills, I have suddenly, through a 
gap, a cleft or "clove road," as the Dutch settlers 
called it, caught sight of a ship under full sail, over 
a field of corn, twenty or thirty miles at sea. The 
effect was similar, since I had no means of measuring 
distances, to seeing a painted ship passed backwards 
and forwards through a magic lantern. 

But to return to the mountain. It seemed as if he 
must be the most singular and heavenly-minded man 
whose dwelling stood highest up the valley. The 
thunder had rumbled at my heels all the way, but the 
shower passed off in another direction, though if it 
had not, I half believed that I should get above it. 
I at length reached the last house but one, where the 
path to the summit diverged to the right, while the 
summit itself rose directly in front. But I determined 
to follow up the valley to its head, and then find my 
own route up the steep, as the shorter and more ad- 
venturous way. I had thoughts of returning to this 
house, which was well kept and so nobly placed, 
the next day, and perhaps remaining a week there, if 
I could have entertainment. Its mistress was a frank 
and hospitable young woman, who stood before me in 
a dishabille, busily and unconcernedly combing her 
long black hair while she talked, giving her head the 
necessary toss with each sweep of the comb, with 
lively, sparkling eyes, and full of interest in that lower 
world from which I had come, talking all the while as 
familiarly as if she had known me for years, and re- 
mindino; me of a cousin of mine. She at first had 



TUESDAY. l8l 

taken me for a student from Williamstown, for they 
went by in parties, she said, either riding or walking, 
almost every pleasant day, and were a pretty wild set 
of fellows ; but they never went by the way I was 
going. As I passed the last house, a man called out 
to know what I had to sell, for seeing my knapsack, 
he thought that I might be a pedler, who was taking 
this unusual route over the ridge of the valley into 
South Adams. He told me that it was still four or five 
miles to the summit by the path which I had left, 
though not more than two in a straight line from 
where I was, but nobody ever went this way ; there 
was no path, and I should find it as steep as the roof 
of a house. But I knew that I was more used to 
woods and mountains than he, and went along through 
his cow-yard, while he, looking at the sun, shouted 
after me that I should not get to the top that night. 
I soon reached the head of the valley, but as I could 
not see the summit from this point, I ascended a low 
mountain on the opposite side, and took its bearing 
with my compass. I at once entered the woods, and 
began to climb the steep side of the mountain in a 
diagonal direction, taking the bearing of a tree every 
dozen rods. The ascent was by no means difficult or 
unpleasant, and occupied much less time than it would 
have taken to follow the path. Even country people, 
I have observed, magnify the difficulty of travelling in 
the forest, and especially among mountains. They 
seem to lack their usual common sense in this. I 
have climbed several higher mountains without guide 
or path, and have found, as might be expected, that 
it takes only more time and patience commonly than 
to travel the smoothest highway. It is very rare that 
you meet with obstacles in this world, which the 



1 82 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

humblest man has not faculties to surmount. It is 
true, we may come to a perpendicular precipice, but 
we need not jump off, nor run our heads against it. 
A man may jump down his own cellar stairs, or dash 
his brains out against his chimney, if he is mad. So 
far as my experience goes, travellers generally exag- 
gerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the 
difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry? If a 
person lost would conclude that after all he is not 
lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own 
old shoes on the very spot where he is, and that for 
the time being he will live there ; but the places that 
have known him, //;^/ are lost, — how much anxiety 
and danger would vanish. I am not alone if I stand 
by myself. Who knows where in space this globe is 
rolling? Yet we will not give ourselves up for lost, 
let it go where it will. 

I made my way steadily upward in a straight line 
through a dense undergrowth of mountain laurel, until 
the trees began to have a scraggy and infernal look, 
as if contending with frost goblins, and at length I 
reached the summit, just as the sun was setting. 
Several acres here had been cleared, and were covered 
with rocks and stumps, and there was a rude observa- 
tory in the middle which overlooked the woods. I 
had one fair view of the country before the sun went 
down, but I was too thirsty to waste any light in view- 
ing the prospect, and set out directly to find water. 
First, going down a well-beaten path for half a mile 
through the low scrubby wood, till I came to where 
the water stood in the tracks of the horses which had 
carried travellers up, I lay down flat, and drank these 
dry one after another, a pure, cold, spring-like water, 
but yet I could not fill my dipper, though I contrived 



TUESDAY. 183 

little syphons of grass stems and ingenious aqueducts 
on a small scale ; it was too slow a process. Then 
remembering that I had passed a moist place near the 
top on my w^ay up, I returned to find it again, and 
here with sharp stones and my hands, in the twilight, I 
made a well about two feet deep, which was soon filled 
with pure cold water, and the birds too came and 
drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and making my 
way back to the observatory, collected some dry sticks 
and made a fire on some flat stones, which had been 
placed on the floor for that purpose, and so I soon 
cooked my supper of rice, having already whittled a 
wooden spoon to eat it with. 

I sat up during the evening, reading by the light 
of the fire the scraps of newspapers in which some 
party had wrapped their luncheon ; the prices cur- 
rent in New York and Boston, the advertisements, 
and the singular editorials which some had seen fit 
to publish, not foreseeing under what critical circum- 
stances they would be read. I read these things at a 
vast advantage there, and it seemed to me that the 
advertisements, or what is called the business part of 
a paper, were greatly the best, the most useful, natural, 
and respectable. Almost all the opinions and senti- 
ments expressed were so little considered, so shallow 
and flimsy, that I thought the very texture of the 
paper must be weaker in that part and tear the more 
easily. The advertisements and the prices current 
were more closely allied to nature, and were respect- 
able in some measure as tide and meteorological 
tables are ; but the reading matter, which I remem- 
bered was most prized down below, unless it was 
some humble record of science, or an extract from 
some old classic, struck me as strangely whimsical, 



1 84 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school-boy's theme, 
such as youths write and after burn. The opinions 
were of that kind that are doomed to wear a different 
aspect to-morrow, like last year's fashions ; as if 
mankind were very green indeed, and would be 
ashamed of themselves in a few years, when they had 
outgrown this verdant period. There was, moreover, 
a singular disposition to wit and humor, but rarely 
the slightest real success ; and the apparent success 
was a terrible satire on the attempt ; as if the Evil 
Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best jokes. 
The advertisements, as I have said, such as were 
serious, and not of the modern quack kind, suggested 
pleasing and poetic thoughts ; for commerce is really 
as interesting as nature. The very names of the 
commodities were poetic, and as suggestive as if they 
had been inserted in a pleasing poem, — Lumber, 
Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, and Logwood. Some 
sober, private, and original thought would have been 
grateful to read there, and as much in harmony with 
the circumstances as if it had been written on a 
mountain top ; for it is of a fashion which never 
changes, and as respectable as hides and logwood, or 
any natural product. What an inestimable compan- 
ion such a scrap of paper would have been, containing 
some fruit of a mature life. What a rehc! What a 
recipe! It seemed a divine invention, by which not 
mere shining coin, but shining and current thoughts, 
could be brought up and left there. 

As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and 
lay down on a board against the side of the building, 
not having any blanket to cover me, with my head to 
the fire, that I might look after it, which is not the 
Indian rule. But as it grew colder towards midnight, 



TUESDAY. jgc 

I at length encased myself completely in boards 
managing even to put a board on top of me, with a 

fortabiy. I was remmded, it is true, of the Irish 
children who inquired what their neighbors did who 
had no door to put over them in winter nights as they 
had , but I am convmced that there was nothing 
very strange in the inquiry. Those who have n vef 
tried It can have no idea how far a door, which keeps 

comfortable We are constituted a good dea? like 
chickens which taken from the hen,°and put in a 
basket of cotton in the chimney corner, will often 
peep till they die nevertheless, but if you pi t in a book 

and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. My 
only companions were the mice, which came to pick 
up the crumbs that had been left in those scraps of 
paper; still as everywhere, pensioners on man, and 
not unwisely improving this elevated tract for their 
tu^T\ ^^^^ ""^''■'^d ~^hat ^vas for them • T 
nibbled what was for me. Once or twice Z 'the 
night, when I looked up, I saw a white cloud drift ng 
through the windows, and filling the whole uppef 

This observatory was a building of considerable 
size, erected by the students of Willikmstor"e 
whose buildings might be seen by daylight gleamint 
far down in the valley. It would really be no small 
advantage if every college were thus located aHhe 
base of a mountain, as good at least as one well- 

cated in th^'Tr""?- '' ^'"^ '' "^" *° be edu- 
shade, <t -u °f ^""""t^'i" ^ in more classical 

shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not only 



1 86 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

that they went to the college, but that they went to 
the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as 
it were, generalize the particular information gained 
below, and subject it to more catholic tests. 

I was up early and perched upon the top of this 
tower to see the daybreak, for some time reading the 
names that had been engraved there before I could 
distinguish more distant objects. An "untamable 
fly " buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance 
as on a molasses hogshead at the end of Long Wharf. 
Even there I must attend to his stale humdrum. 
But now I come to the pith of this long digression. — 
As the light increased I discovered around me an 
ocean of mist, which reached up by chance exactly to 
the base of the tower, and shut out every vestige of the 
earth, while I was left floating on this fragment of the 
wreck of a world, on my carved plank in cloudland ; a 
situation which required no aid from the imagination 
to render it impressive. As the light in the east 
steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly the 
new world into which I had risen in the night, the 
new terra-firma perchance of my future life. There 
was not a crevice left through which the trivial places 
we name Massachusetts, or Vermont, or New York, 
could be seen, while I still inhaled the clear atmos- 
phere of a July morning, — if it were July there. All 
around beneath me was spread for a hundred miles 
on every side, as far as the eye could reach, an undu- 
lating country of clouds, answering in the varied 
swell of its surface to the terrestrial world it veiled. 
It was such a country as we might see in dreams, 
with all the delights of paradise. There were immense 
snowy pastures apparently smooth-shaven and firm, 
and shady vales between the vaporous mountains, 



TUESDAY. 187 

and far in the horizon I could see where some luxuri- 
ous misty timber jutted into the prairie, and trace the 
windings of a water course, some unimagined Ama- 
zon or Orinoko, by the misty trees on its brink. As 
there was wanting the symbol, so there was not the 
substance of impurity, no spot nor stain. It was a 
favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this 
vision. The earth beneath had become such a flitting 
thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been 
before. It was not merely veiled to me, but it had 
passed away like the phantom of a shadow, o-zctSs ovap, 
and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed 
above storm and cloud, so by successive days' journeys 
I might reach the region of eternal day beyond the 
tapering shadow of the earth ; aye, 

" Heaven itself shall slide 
And roll away, like melting stars that glide 
Along their oily threads." 

But when its own sun began to rise on this pure 
world, I found myself a dweller in the dazzling halls 
of Aurora, into which poets have had but a partial 
glance over the eastern hills, — drifting amid the 
safifron-colored clouds, and playing with the rosy 
fingers of the Dawn, in the very path of the Sun\s 
chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy dust, enjoying 
the benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting 
glances of the god. The inhabitants of earth behold 
commonly but the dark and shadowy under-side of 
heaven's pavement ; it is only when seen at a favora- 
ble angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that 
some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are 
revealed. But my muse would fail to convey an im- 
pression of the gorgeous tapestry by which I was sur- 



1 88 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

rounded, such as men see faintly reflected afar oflf in 
the chambers of the east. Here, as on earth, I saw 
the gracious god 

" Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, . . . 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." 

But never here did "Heaven's sun" stain himself. 
But alas, owing as I think to some unworthiness in 
myself, my private sun did stain himself, and 

" Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
With ugly wrack on his celestial face," — 

for before the god had reached the zenith the heavenly 
pavement rose and embraced my wavering virtue, or 
rather I sank down again into that " forlorn world," 
from which the celestial Sun had hid his visage. — 

" How may a worm, that crawls along the dust, 
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high, 
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just. 
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie, 
Cloth'd with such light, as blinds the angel's eye ? 
How may weak mortal ever hope to file 
His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style ? 
O, raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile ! " 

In the preceding evening I had seen the summits 
of new and yet higher mountains, the Catskills, by 
which I might hope to climb to heaven again, and 
had set my compass for a fair lake in the south-west, 
which lay in my way, for which I now steered, descend- 
ing the mountain by my own route, on the side oppo- 
site to that by which I had ascended, and soon found 
myself in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, and 
the inhabitants affirmed that it had been a cloudy and 
drizzling day wholly. 



TUESDA V. 1 89 

But now we must make haste back before the fog 
disperses to the blithe Merrimack water. — 

Since that first " away ! away ! " 

Many a lengthy reach we 've rowed, 

Still the sparrow on the spray 

Hastes to usher in the day 

With her simple stanza'd ode. 

We passed a canal boat before sunrise, groping its 
way to the seaboard, and though we could not see it 
on account of the fog, the few dull, thumping, sterto- 
rous sounds which we heard, impressed us with a sense 
of weight and irresistible motion. One little rill of 
commerce already awake on this distant New Hamp- 
shire river. The fog, as it required more skill in the 
steering, enhanced the interest of our early voyage, 
and made the river seem indefinitely broad. A slight 
mist, through which objects are faintly visible, has 
the effect of expanding even ordinary streams, by a 
singular mirage, into arms of the sea or inland lakes. 
In the present instance it was even fragrant and 
invigorating, and we enjoyed it as a sort of earlier 
sunshine, or dewy and embryo light. 

Low-anchored cloud, 

Newfoundland air, 

Fountain-head and source of rivers, 

Dew cloth, dream drapery. 

And napkin spread by fays ; 

Drifting meadow of the air, 

Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, 

And in whose fenny labyrinth 

The bittern booms and heron wades ; 

Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers. 

Bear only perfumes and the scent 

Of healing herbs to just men's fields. 



1 90 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

The same pleasant and observant historian whom 
we quoted above says, that "In the mountainous parts 
of the country, the ascent of vapors, and their forma- 
tion into clouds, is a curious and entertaining object. 
The vapors are seen rising in small columns like 
smoke from many chimneys. When risen to a cer- 
tain height, they spread, meet, condense, and are 
attracted to the mountains, where they either distil 
in gentle dews, and replenish the springs, or descend 
in showers, accompanied with thunder. After short 
intermissions, the process is repeated many times in 
the course of a summer day, afifording to travellers a 
lively illustration of what is observed in the book 
of Job, ' They are wet with the showers of the 
mountains.' " 

Fogs and clouds which conceal the overshadowing 
mountains lend the breadth of the plains to mountain 
vales. Even a small featured country acquires some 
grandeur in stormy weather, when clouds are seen 
drifting between the beholder and the neighboring 
hills. When, in travelling toward Haverhill through 
Hampstead in this State, on the height of land be- 
tween the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or the sea, 
you commence the descent eastward, the view toward 
the coast is so distant and unexpected, though the 
sea is invisible, that you at first suppose the unob- 
structed atmosphere to be a fog in the lowlands con- 
cealing hills of corresponding elevation to that you 
are upon ; but it is the mist of prejudice alone, which 
the winds will not disperse. The most stupendous 
scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, 
or in other words limited, and the imagination is no 
longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height 
and breadth of a mountain or a water-fall are always 



TUESDAY. 191 

ridiculously small ; they are the imagined only that 
content us. Nature is not made after such a fashion 
as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her 
wonders as the scenery around our home. 

Such was the heaviness of the dews along this 
river, that we were generally obliged to leave our 
tent spread over the bows of the boat till the sun 
had dried it, to avoid mildew. We passed the mouth 
of Penichook Brook, a wild salmon stream, in the 
fog without seeing it. At length the sun's rays strug- 
gled through the mist and showed us the pines on 
shore dripping with dew, and springs trickling from 
the moist banks, — 

"And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms, 
Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds, 
Dandle the morning's childhood in their arms, 
And, if they chanced to slip the prouder pines, 
The under corylets did catch their shines. 
To gild their leaves." 

We rowed for some hours between glistening banks 
before the sun had dried the grass and leaves, or the 
day had established its character. Its serenity at 
last seemed the more profound and secure for the 
denseness of the morning's fog. The river became 
swifter, and the scenery more pleasing than before. 
The banks were steep and clayey for the most part, 
and trickling with water, and where a spring oozed 
out a few feet above the river, the boatmen had cut 
a trough out of a slab with their axes, and placed 
it so as to receive the water and fill their jugs con- 
veniently. Sometimes this purer and cooler water, 
bursting out from under a pine or a rock, was col- 
lected into a basin close to the edge of, and level 
with the river, a fountain-head of the Merrimack. 



192 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

So near along life's stream are the fountains of inno- 
cence and youth making fertile its sandy margin ; and 
the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often 
at these uncontaminated sources. Some youthful 
spring, perchance, still empties with tinkling music 
into the oldest river, even when it is falling into 
the sea, and we imagine that its music is distin- 
guished by the river gods from the general lapse of 
the stream, and falls sweeter on their ears in propor- 
tion as it is nearer to the ocean. As the evapora- 
tions of the river feed thus these unsuspected springs 
which filter through its banks, so, perchance, our 
aspirations fall back again in springs on the margin 
of life's stream to refresh and purify it. The yellow 
and tepid river may float his scow, and cheer his eye 
with its reflections and its ripples, but the boat- 
man quenches his thirst at this small rill alone. It 
is this purer and cooler element that chiefly sustains 
his life. The race will long survive that is thus 
discreet. 

Our course this morning lay between the territories 
of Merrimack, on the west, and Litchfield, once called 
Brenton's Farm, on the east, which townships were 
anciently the Indian Naticook. Brenton was a fur 
trader among the Indians, and these lands were 
granted to him in 1656. The latter township con- 
tains about five hundred inhabitants, of whom, how- 
ever, we saw none, and but few of their dwellings. 
Being on the river, whose banks are always high and 
generally conceal the few houses, the country ap- 
peared much more wild and primitive than to the 
traveller on the neighboring roads. The river is by 
far the most attractive highway, and those boatmen 
who have spent twenty or twenty-five years on it, 



TUESDAY. 193 

must have had a much fairer, more wild and memo- 
rable experience than the dusty and jarring one of the 
teamster, who has driven, during the same time, on 
the roads which run parallel with the stream. As 
one ascends the Merrimack, he rarely sees a village, 
but for the most part, alternate wood and pasture 
lands, and sometimes a field of corn or potatoes, of 
rye or oats or English grass, with a few straggling 
apple trees, and, at still longer intervals, a farmer's 
house. The soil, excepting the best of the interval, 
is commonly as light and sandy as a patriot could 
desire. Sometimes this forenoon the country ap- 
peared in its primitive state, and as if the Indian still 
inhabited it ; and again, as if many free new settlers 
occupied it, their slight fences straggling down to the 
water's edge, and the barking of dogs, and even the 
prattle of children, were heard, and smoke was seen 
to go up from some hearthstone, and the banks were 
divided into patches of pasture, mowing, tillage, and 
woodland. But when the river spread out broader, 
with an uninhabited islet, or a long low sandy shore 
which ran on single and devious, not answering to 
its opposite, but far off as if it were seashore or single 
coast, and the land no longer nursed the river in 
its bosom, but they conversed as equals, the rustling 
leaves with rippling waves, and few fences were 
seen, but high oak woods on one side, and large 
herds of cattle, and all tracks seemed a point to one 
centre, behind some statelier grove, — we imagined 
that the river flowed through an extensive manor, and 
that the few inhabitants were retainers to a lord, and 
a feudal state of things prevailed. 

When there was a suitable reach, we caught sight 
of the Goffstown Mountain, the Indian Uncannunuc, 



194 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

rising before us on the west side. It was a calm and 
beautiful day, with only a slight zephyr to ripple the 
surface of the water, and rustle the woods on shore, 
and just warmth enough to prove the kindly dispo- 
sition of Nature to her children. With buoyant 
spirits and vigorous impulses we tossed our boat 
rapidly along into the very middle of this forenoon. 
The fish-hawk sailed and screamed overhead. The 
chipping, or striped squirrel, schirtis striattis, sat 
upon the end of some Virginia fence or rider reach- 
ing over the stream, twirling a green nut with one 
paw, as in a lathe, while the other held it fast against 
its incisors as chisels. Like an independent russet 
leaf, with a will of its own, rustling whither it could ; 
now under the fence, now over it, now peeping 
at the voyageurs through a crack with only its tail 
visible, now at its lunch deep in the toothsome kernel, 
and now a rod off playing at hide-and-seek, with 
the nut stowed away in its chops, where were half 
a dozen more beside, extending its cheeks to a 
ludicrous breadth. As if it were devising through 
what safe valve of frisk or somerset to let its super- 
fluous life escape ; the stream passing harmlessly off, 
even while it sits, in constant electric flashes through 
its tail ; and now with a chuckling squeak it dives 
into the root of a hazel, and we see no more of it. 
Or the larger red squirrel or chickaree, sometimes 
called the Hudson Bay squirrel, striurus Hudso7tins, 
gave warning of our approach by that peculiar alarum 
of his, like the winding up of some strong clock, 
in the top of a pine tree, and dodged behind its stem, 
or leaped from tree to tree, with such caution and 
adroitness as if much depended on the fidelity of his 
scout, running along the white pine boughs some- 



TUESDAY. 195 

times twenty rods by our side, with such speed, and 
hy such unerring routes as if it were some well-worn 
familiar path to him ; and presently, when we have 
passed, he returns to his work of cutting oif the pine 
cones, and letting them fall to the ground. 

We passed CromwelPs Falls, the first we met with 
on this river, this forenoon, by means of locks, with- 
out using our wheels. These falls are the Nesen- 
keag of the Indians. Great Nesenkeag Stream comes 
in on the right just above, and Little Nesenkeag 
some distance below, both in Litchfield. We read 
in the gazetteer, under the head of Merrimack, that 
" The first house in this town was erected on the 
margin of the river [soon after 1665] for a house of 
traffic with the Indians. For some time one Crom- 
well carried on a lucrative trade with them, weigh- 
ing their furs with his foot, till, enraged at his 
supposed or real deception, they formed the resolu- 
tion to murder him. This intention being communi- 
cated to Cromwell, he buried his wealth and made 
his escape. Within a few hours after his flight, a 
party of the Penacook tribe arrived, and not find- 
ing the object of their resentment, burnt his habi- 
tation." Upon the top of the high bank here, close 
to the river, was still to be seen his cellar, now over- 
grown with trees. It was a convenient spot for such 
a traffic, at the foot of the first falls above the settle- 
ments, and commanding a pleasant view up the river, 
where he could see the Indians coming down with 
their furs. The lock-man told us that his shovel and 
tongs had been plowed up here, and also a stone 
with his name on it. But we will not vouch for 
the truth of this story. These were the traces of 
the white trader. On the opposite bank, where it 



196 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

jutted over the stream cape-wise, we picked up four 
arrow-heads and a small Indian tool made of stone, 
as soon as we had climbed it, where plainly there 
had once stood a wigwam of the Indians with whom 
Cromwell traded, and who fished and hunted here 
before he came. 

As usual the gossips have not been silent respect- 
ing Cromwell's buried wealth, and it is said that 
some years ago a farmer's plow, not far from here, 
slid over a flat stone which emitted a hollow sound, 
and on its being raised a sum of money was found. 
The lock-man told us another similar story about a 
farmer in a neighboring town, who had been a poor 
man, but who suddenly bought a good farm, and w^as 
well to do in the world ; and, when he was questioned, 
did not give a satisfactory account of the matter ; — 
how few alas, could! This caused his hired man to 
remember, that one day as they were plowing together 
the plow struck something, and his employer going 
back to look, concluded not to go round again, say- 
ing that the sky looked rather louring, and so put up 
his team. The like urgency has caused many things 
to be remembered which never transpired. The truth 
is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have 
only to go work to find it. 

Not far from these falls stands an oak tree on the 
interval, about a quarter of a mile from the river, on 
the farm of a Mr. Lund, which was pointed out to 
us as the spot where French, the leader of the party 
which went in pursuit of the Indians from Dunstable, 
was killed. Fai-well dodged them in the thick woods 
near. It did not look as if men had ever had to run 
for their lives on this now open and peaceful interval. 

Here too was another extensive desert by the side 



TUESDAY. 197 

of the road in Litchfield, visible from the bank of the 
river. The sand was blown off in some places to the 
depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving small grotesque 
hillocks of that height where there was a clump of 
bushes firmly rooted. Thirty or forty years ago, as 
we were told, it was a sheep pasture, but the sheep 
being worried by the fleas, began to paw the ground, 
till they broke the sod, and so the sand began to 
blow, till now it had extended over forty or fifty 
acres. This evil might easily have been remedied 
at first, by spreading birches with their leaves on 
over the sand, and fastening them down with stakes, 
to break the wind. The flies bit the sheep, and the 
sheep bit the ground, and the sore had spread to this 
extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a little 
scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where 
caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite 
of an African flea. This poor globe, how it must 
itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough 
to spread a salve of birches over its sores? — Here 
too we noticed where the Indians had gathered a 
heap of stones, perhaps for their council fire, which 
by their weight having prevented the sand under 
them from blowing away, were left on the summit of 
a mound. They told us that arrow-heads, and also 
bullets of lead and iron, had been found here. We 
noticed seyeral other sandy tracts in our voyage ; and 
the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the 
nearest mountain by its yellow sandbanks, though the 
river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, 
as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these 
causes. Railroads have been made through certain 
irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set 
the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms 



igS A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

into deserts, and the Company has had to pay the 
damages. 

This sand seemed to us the connecting Hnk between 
land and water. It was a kind of water on which you 
could walk, and you could see the ripple marks on its 
surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those 
at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read 
that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to per- 
form their ablutions in sand when they cannot get 
water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now 
understood the propriety of this provision. 

Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose 
formation, perhaps, these very banks have sent their 
contribution, is a similar desert of drifting sand, of 
various colors, blown into graceful curves by the 
wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching 
nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of the 
marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile 
wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and 
it is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green 
thing with which a countryman is familiar. The 
thin vegetation stands half buried in sand, as in drift- 
ing snow. The only shrub, the beach plum, which 
gives the island its name, grows but a few feet high ; 
but this is so abundant that parties of a hundred at 
once come from the main land and down the Merri- 
mack in September, and pitch their tents, and gather 
the plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve. 
The graceful and delicate beach pea too grows abun- 
dantly amid the sand ; and several strange moss-like 
and succulent plants. The island for its whole length 
is scolloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet 
high, by the v/ind, and excepting a faint trail on the 



TUESDAY. 199 

edge of the marsh, is as trackless as Sahara. There 
are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys plowed by the 
wind, where you might expect to discover the bones 
of a caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load 
with the sand for masons' uses, and in a few hours 
the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet 
you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come 
to fresh water ; and you are surprised to learn that 
woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, though 
you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves. 
I have walked down the whole length of its broad 
beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find 
a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts 
does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On 
the sea side there are only a distant sail and a few 
coots to break the grand monotony. A solitary stake 
stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual, is remarka- 
ble as a land-mark for miles ; while for music you hear 
only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary 
peep of the beach birds. 

There were several canal boats at Cromwell's Falls, 
passing through the locks, for which we waited. In 
the forward part of one stood a brawny New Hamp- 
shire man, leaning on his pole, bareheaded and in 
shirt and trousers only, a rude Apollo of a man, 
coming down from that " vast uplandish country " to 
the main ; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and vig- 
orous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrin- 
kles the sun still lodged, as little touched by the heats 
and frosts and withering cares of life, as a mountain 
maple ; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with 
whom we parleyed a while, and parted not without a 
sincere interest in one another. His humanity was 



200 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

genuine and instinctive, and his mdeness only a man- 
ner. He inquired, just as we were passing out of ear- 
shot, if we had killed anything, and we shouted after 
him that we had shot a buoy, and could see him for a 
long while scratching his head in vain, to know if he 
had heard aright. 

There is reason in the distinction of civil and un- 
civil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind, 
that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap- 
wood at all. We sometimes meet uncivil men, chil- 
dren of Amazons, who dwell by mountain paths, and 
are said to be inhospitable to strangers ; whose salu- 
tation is as rude as the grasp of their brawny hands, 
and who deal with men as unceremoniously as they 
are wont to deal with the elements. They need only 
to extend their clearings, and let in more sunlight, to 
seek out the southern slopes of the hills, from which 
they may look down on the civil plain or ocean, and 
temper their diet duly with the cereal fruits, consum- 
ing less wild meat and acorns, to become like the 
inhabitants of cities. A true politeness does not re- 
sult from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, 
but grows naturally in characters of the right grain 
and quality, through a long fronting of men and 
events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. Per- 
haps I can tell a tale to the purpose while the lock is 
filling, — for our voyage this forenoon furnishes but 
few incidents of importance. 

Early one summer morning I had left the shores of 
the Connecticut, and for the livelong day travelled up 
the bank of a river, which came in from the west; 
now looking down on the stream, foaming and rip- 
pling through the forest a mile off, from the hills over 



TUESDAY. 201 

which the road led, and now sitting on its rocky brink 
and dipping my feet in its rapids, or bathing adventur- 
ously in mid-channel. The hills grew more and more 
frequent, and gradually swelled into mountains as I 
advanced, hemming in the course of the river, so that 
at last I could not see where it came from, and was at 
liberty to imagine the most wonderful meanderings 
and descents. At noon I slept on the grass in the 
shade of a maple, where the river had found a broader 
channel than usual, and was spread out shallow, with 
frequent sand-bars exposed. In the names of the 
towns I recognized some which I had long ago read 
on teamsters' wagons, that had come from far up 
country, quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous fame. 
I walked along musing, and enchanted by rows of 
sugar-maples, through the small and uninquisitive 
villages, and sometimes was pleased with the sight 
of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, where there ap- 
peared no inhabitants to use it. It seemed, however, 
as essential to the river as a fish, and to lend a certain 
dignity to it. It was like the trout of mountain streams 
to the fishes of the sea, or like the young of the land 
crab born far in the interior, who have never yet heard 
the sound of the ocean's surf. The hills approached 
nearer and nearer to the stream, until at last they 
closed behind me, and I found myself, just before 
night-fall, in a romantic and retired valley, about half 
a mile in length, and barely wide enough for the 
stream at its bottom. I thought that there could be 
no finer site for a cottage among mountains. You 
could anywhere run across the stream on the rocks, 
and its constant murmuring would quiet the passions 
of mankind forever. Suddenly the road, which seemed 
aiming for the mountain side, turned short to the left, 



202 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and another valley opened, concealing the former, and 
of the same character with it. It was the most re- 
markable and pleasing scenery I had ever seen. I 
found here a few mild and hospitable inhabitants, 
who, as the day was not quite spent, and I was anx- 
ious to improve the light, directed me four or five 
miles further on my way to the dwelling of a man 
whose name was Rice, who occupied the last and 
highest of the valleys that lay in my path, and who, 
they said, was a rather rude and uncivil man. But, 
" What is a foreign country to those who have science ? 
Who is a stranger to those who have the habit of 
speaking kindly? " 

At length, as the sun was setting behind the moun- 
tains in a still darker and more solitary vale, I reached 
the dwelling of this man. Except for the narrowness 
of the plain, and that the stones were solid granite, it 
was the counterpart of that retreat to which Belphoebe 
bore the wounded Timias ; — 

" in a pleasant glade, 
With mountains round about environed, 
And mighty woods, which did the valley shade, 
And like a stately theatre it made, 
Spreading itself into a spacious plain ; 
And in the midst a little river played 
Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain, 
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain." 

I observed, as I drew near, that he was not so rude 
as I had anticipated, for he kept many cattle, and dogs 
to watch them, and I saw where he had made maple 
sugar on the sides of the mountains, and above all 
distinguished the voices of children mingling with 
the murmur of the torrent before the door. As I 
passed his stable I met one whom I supposed to be a 



TUESDAY. 203 

hired man, attending to his cattle, and inquired if 
they entertained travellers at that house. "Some- 
times we do," he answered, gruffly, and immediately 
went to the farthest stall from me, and I perceived 
that it was Rice himself whom I had addressed. But 
pardoning this incivility to the wildness of the scenery, 
I bent my steps to the house. There was no sign-post 
before it, nor any of the usual invitations to the trav- 
eller, though I saw by the road that many went and 
came there, but the owner's name only was fastened 
to the outside, a sort of implied and sullen invitation, 
as I thought. I passed from room to room without 
meeting any one, till I came to what seemed the 
guests' apartment, which was neat, and even had an 
air of refinement about it, and I was glad to find a 
map against the wall which would direct me on my 
journey on the morrow. At length I heard a step in 
a distant apartment, which was the first I had entered, 
and went to see if the landlord had come in ; but it 
proved to be only a child, one of those whose voices 
I had heard, probably his son, and between him and 
me stood in the door-way a large watch-dog, which 
growled at me, and looked as if he would presently 
spring, but the boy did not speak to him ; and when 
I asked for a glass of water, he briefly said, "It runs 
in the corner." So I took a mug from the counter 
and went out of doors, and searched round the corner 
of the house, but could find neither well nor spring, 
nor any water but the stream which ran all along the 
front. I came back, therefore, and setting down the 
mug, asked the child if the stream was good to drink ; 
whereupon he seized the mug and going to the corner 
of the room, where a cool spring which issued from 
the mountain behind trickled through a pipe into the 



204 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

apartment, filled it, and drank, and gave it to me 
empty again, and calling to the dog, rushed out of 
doors. Ere long some of the hired men made their 
appearance, and drank at the spring, and lazily washed 
themselves and combed their hair in silence, and some 
sat down as if weary, and fell asleep in their seats. 
But all the while I saw no women, though I some- 
times heard a bustle in that part of the house from 
which the spring came. 

At length Rice himself came in, for it was now 
dark, with an ox whip in his hand, breathing hard, 
and he too soon settled down into his seat not far 
from me, as if now that his day's work was done he 
had no further to travel, but only to digest his supper 
at his leisure. When I asked him if he could give 
me a bed, he said there was one ready, in such a tone 
as imphed that I ought to have known it, and the less 
said about that the better. So far so good. And 
yet he continued to look at me as if he would fain 
have me say something further like a traveller. I 
remarked, that it was a wild and rugged country he 
inhabited, and worth coming many miles to see. 
'^ Not so very rough neither," said he, and appealed 
to his men to bear witness to the breadth and 
smoothness of his fields, which consisted in all of 
one small interval, and to the size of his crops ; " and 
if we have some hills,'' added he, " there 's no better 
pasturage anywhere." I then asked if this place was 
the one I had heard of, calling it by a name I had 
seen on the map, or if it was a certain other ; and he 
answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one nor the 
other; that he had settled it and cultivated it, and 
made it what it was, and I could know nothing about 
it. Observing some guns and other implements of 



TUESDA Y. 205 

hunting hanging on brackets around the room, and 
his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion 
to change the discourse, and inquired if there was 
much game in that country, and he answered this 
question more graciously, having some glimmering of 
my drift ; but when I inquired if there were any bears, 
he answered impatiently, that he was no more in 
danger of losing his sheep than his neighbors, he had 
tamed and civilized that region. After a pause, think- 
ing of my journey on the morrow, and the few hours 
of daylight in that hollow and mountainous country, 
which would require me to be on my way betimes, I 
remarked, that the day must be shorter by an hour 
there than on the neighboring plains ; at which he 
gruffly asked what I knew about it, and affirmed that 
he had as much daylight as his neighbors ; he ventured 
to say, the days were longer there than where I lived, 
as I should find if I stayed ; that in some way, I could 
not be expected to understand how, the sun came 
over the mountains half an hour earlier, and stayed 
half an hour later there than on the neighboring 
plains. — And more of like sort he said. He was, 
indeed, as rude as a fabled satyr. But I suffered him 
to pass for what he was, for why should I quarrel 
with nature? and was even pleased at the discovery 
of such a singular natural phenomenon. I dealt with 
him as if to me all manners were indifferent, and he 
had a sweet wild way with him. I would not question 
Nature, and I would rather have him as he was, than 
as I would have him. For I had come up here not 
for sympathy, or kindness, or society, but for novelty 
and adventure, and to see what Nature had produced 
here. I therefore did not repel his rudeness, but 
quite innocently welcomed it all, and knew how to 



206 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

appreciate it, as if I were reading in an old drama a 
part well sustained. He was indeed a coarse and 
sensual man, and, as I have said, uncivil, but he had 
his just quarrel with nature and mankind, I have no 
doubt, only he had no artificial covering to his ill 
humors. He was earthy enough, but yet there was 
good soil in him, and even a long-suffering Saxon 
probity at bottom. If you could represent the case 
to him, he would not let the race die out in him, like a 
red Indian. 

At length I told him that he was a fortunate man, 
and I trusted that he was grateful for so much light, 
and rising, said I would take a lamp, and that I would 
pay him then for my lodging, for I expected to re- 
commence my journey, even as early as the sun rose 
in his country ; but he answered in haste, and this 
time civilly, that I should not fail to find some of his 
household stirring, however early, for they were no 
sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them 
before I started if I chose ; and as he lighted the lamp 
I detected a gleam of true hospitality and ancient 
civility, a beam of pure and even gentle humanity 
from his bleared and moist eyes. It was a look more 
intimate with me, and more explanatory, than any 
words of his could have been if he had tried to his 
dying day. It was more significant than any Rice of 
those parts could even comprehend, and long antici- 
pated this man's culture, — a glance of his pure genius, 
which did not much enlighten him, but did impress 
and rule him for the moment, and faintly constrain 
his voice and manner. He cheerfully led the way to 
my apartment, stepping over the limbs of his men 
who were asleep on the floor in an intervening cham- 
ber, and showed me a clean and comfortable bed. 



TUESDA Y. 207 

For many pleasant hours, after the household was 
asleep, I sat at the open window, for it was a sultry 
night, and heard the little river 

" Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain, 
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain." 

But I arose as usual by starlight the next morning, 
before my host, or his men, or even his dogs, were 
awake ; and having left a ninepence on the counter, 
was already half way over the mountain with the sun, 
before they had broken their fast. 

Before I had left the country of my host, while the 
first rays of the sun slanted over the mountains, as I 
stopped by the wayside to gather some raspberries, a 
very old man, not far from a hundred, came along 
with a milking pail in his hand, and turning aside 
began to pluck the berries near me ; — 

" his reverend locks 

In comelye curies did wave ; 
And on his aged temples grew 

The blossoms of the grave." — 

But when I inquired the way, he answered in a low, 
rough voice, without looking up or seeming to regard 
my presence, which I imputed to his years ; and pres- 
ently, muttering to himself, he proceeded to collect 
his cows in a neighboring pasture ; and when he had 
again returned near to the vv^ayside, he suddenly 
stopped, while his cows went on before, and, un- 
covering his head, prayed aloud in the cool morning 
air, as if he had forgotten this exercise before, for 
his daily bread, and also that He who letteth his rain 
fall on the just and on the unjust, and without whom 
not a sparrow falleth to the ground, would not neglect 



208 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

the stranger (meaning me), and with even more direct 
and personal applications, though mainly according 
to the long established formula common to lowlanders 
and the inhabitants of mountains. When he had done 
praying, I made bold to ask him if he had any cheese 
in his hut which he would sell me, but he answered 
without looking up, and in the same low and repul- 
sive voice as before, that they did not make any, and 
went to milking. It is written, "The stranger who 
turneth away from a house with disappointed hopes, 
leaveth there his own offences, and departeth, taking 
with him all the good actions of the owner." 

Being now fairly in the stream of this week's com- 
merce, we began to meet with boats more frequently, 
and hailed them from time to time with the freedom 
of sailors. The boatmen appeared to lead an easy 
and contented life, and we thought that we should pre- 
fer their employment ourselves to many professions 
which are much more sought after. They suggested 
how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being 
and serenity of man, how indifferent all employments 
are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the 
eyes of men, if pursued with sufificient buoyancy and 
freedom. With liberty and pleasant weather, the 
simplest occupation, any unquestioned country mode 
of life which detains us in the open air, is alluring. 
The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more 
than respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn 
neighbors. We are as happy as the birds when our 
Good Genius permits us to pursue any outdoor work 
without a sense of dissipation. Our pen-knife glitters 
in the sun ; our voice is echoed by yonder wood ; if 
an oar drops, we are fain to let it drop again. 



TUESDA Y. 209 

The canal boat is of very simple construction, 
requiring but little ship timber, and, as we were told, 
costs about two hundred dollars. They are managed 
by two men. In ascending the stream they use poles 
fourteen or fifteen feet long, shod with iron, walking 
about one third the length of the boat from the for- 
ward end. Going down, they commonly keep in the 
middle of the stream, using an oar at each end ; or 
if the wind is favorable they raise their broad sail, 
and have only to steer. They commonly carry down 
bricks or wood, — fifteen or sixteen thousand bricks, 
and as many cords of wood, at a time, — and bring 
back stores for the country, consuming two or three 
days each way between Concord and Charlestown. 
They sometimes pile the wood so as to leave a shelter 
in one part where they may retire from the rain. One 
can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or 
one more favorable to contem.plation and the observa- 
tion of nature. Unlike the mariner, they have the 
constantly varying panorama of the shore to relieve 
the monotony of their labor, and it seemed to us that 
as they thus glided noiselessly from town to town, 
with all their furniture about them, for their very 
homestead is a movable, they could comment on the 
character of the inhabitants with greater advantage 
and security to themselves than the traveller in a 
coach, who would be unable to indulge in such 
broadsides of wit and humor in so small a vessel, for 
fear of the recoil. They are not subject to great 
exposure, like the lumberers of Maine, in any weather, 
but inhale the healthfullest breezes, being slightly 
encumbered with clothing, frequently with the head 
and feet bare. When we met them at noon as they 
were leisurely descending the stream, their busy com- 



2IO A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

merce did not look like toil, but rather like some 
ancient oriental game still played on a large scale, as 
the game of chess, for instance, handed down to this 
generation. From morning till night, unless the wind 
is so fair that his single sail will suffice without other 
labor than steering, the boatman walks backwards and 
forwards on the side of his boat, nov/ stooping with 
his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly 
to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily forward 
through an endless valley and an ever-changing scen- 
ery, now distinguishing his course for a mile or two, 
and now shut in by a sudden turn of the river in a 
small woodland lake. All the phenomena which sur- 
round him are simple and grand, and there is some- 
thing impressive, even majestic, in the very motion 
he causes, which will naturally be communicated to 
his own character, and he feels the slow irresistible 
movement under him with pride, as if it were his own 
energy. 

The news spread like wild fire among us youths, 
when formerly, once in a year or two, one of these 
boats came up the Concord River, and was seen steal- 
ing mysteriously through the meadows and past the 
village. It came and departed as silently as a cloud, 
without noise or dust, and was witnessed by few. 
One summer day this huge traveller might be seen 
moored at some meadow's wharf, and another sum- 
mer day it was not there. Where precisely it came 
from, or who these men were who knew the rocks and 
soundings better than we who bathed there, we could 
never tell. We knew some river's bay only, but they 
took rivers from end to end. They were a sort of 
fabulous river-men to us. It was inconceivable by 
what sort of mediation any mere landsman could 



TUESDA V. 211 

hold communication with them. Would they heave 
to to gratify his wishes ? No, it was favor enough to 
know faintly of their destination, or the time of their 
possible return. I have seen them in the summer, 
when the stream ran low, mowing the weeds in mid- 
channel, and with hayers' jests cutting broad swathes 
in three feet of water, that they might make a passage 
for their scow, while the grass in long windrows was 
carried down the stream, undried by the rarest hay 
weather. We used to admire unweariedly how their 
vessel would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so 
many casks of lime, and thousands of bricks, and such 
heaps of iron ore, with wheel-barrows aboard, — and 
that when we stepped on it, it did not yield to the 
pressure of our feet. It gave us confidence in the 
prevalence of the law of buoyancy, and we imagined 
to what infinite uses it might be put. The men 
appeared to lead a kind of life on it, and it was whis- 
pered that they slept aboard. Some affirmed that it 
carried sail, and that such winds blew here as filled 
the sails of vessels on the ocean ; which again others 
much doubted. They had been seen to sail across 
our Fair-Haven bay by lucky fishers who were out, 
but unfortunately others were not there to see. We 
might then say that our river was navigable, — why 
not ? In after years I read in print, with no little 
satisfaction, that it was thought by some that with a 
little expense in removing rocks and deepening the 
channel, " there might be a profitable inland naviga- 
tion." /then lived somewhere to tell of. 

Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa-nut and 
bread-fruit tree in the remotest isle, and sooner or 
later dawns on the duskiest and most simple-minded 
savage. If we may be pardoned the digression, — 



212 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

who can help being affected at the thought of the very 
fine and slight, but positive relation, in which the 
savage inhabitants of some remote isle stand to the 
mysterious white mariner, the child of the sun? — As 
if wc were to have dealings with an animal higher in 
the scale of being than ourselves. It is a barely rec- 
ognized fact to the natives that he exists, and has his 
home far away somewhere, and is glad to buy their 
fresh fruits with his superfluous commodities. Under 
the same catholic sun glances his white ship over 
Pacific waves into their smooth bays, and the poor 
savage's paddle gleams in the air. 

Man's little acts are grand, 
Beheld from land to land, 
There as they lie in time, 
Within their native clime. 

Ships with the noon-tide weigh, 

And glide before its ray, 

To some retired bay, 

Their haunt, 

Whence, under tropic sun, 

Again they run, 

Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant. 
For this was ocean meant. 
For this the sun was sent, 
And moon was lent. 
And winds in distant caverns pent. 

Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been 
extended, and there is now but little boating on the 
Merrimack. All kinds of produce and stores were 
formerly conveyed by water, but now nothing is car- 
ried up the stream, and almost wood and bricks alone 
are carried down, and these are also carried on the 
railroad. The locks are fast wearing out, and will 
soon be impassable, since the tolls will not pay the 



TUESDA V. 213 

expense of repairing them, and so in a few years 
there will be an end of boating on this river. The 
boating, at present, is principally between Merrimack 
and Lowell, or Hooksett and Manchester. They 
make two or three trips from Merrimack to Lowell 
and back, about twenty-five miles each way, in a week, 
according to wind and weather. The boatman comes 
singing in to shore late at night, and moors his empty 
boat, and gets his supper and lodging in some house 
near at hand, and again early in the morning, by star- 
light, perhaps, he pushes away up stream, and, by a 
shout, or the fragment of a song, gives notice of his 
approach to the lock-man, with whom he is to take 
his breakfast. If he gets up to his wood-pile before 
noon he proceeds to load his boat, with the help 
of his single " hand '' and is on his way down again 
before night. When he gets to Lowell he unloads 
his boat, and gets his receipt for his cargo, and hav- 
ing heard the news at the public house at Middlesex 
or elsewhere, goes back with his empty boat and his 
receipt in his pocket to the owner, and to get a new 
load. We were frequently advertised of their ap- 
proach by some faint sound behind us, and looking 
round saw them a mile off, creeping stealthily up the 
side of the stream like alligators. It was pleasant to 
hail these sailors of the Merrimack from time to time, 
and learn the news which circulated with them. We 
imagined that the sun shining on their bare heads 
had stamped a liberal and public character on their 
most private thoughts. 

The open and sunny interval still stretched away 
from the river, sometimes by two or more terraces, to 
the distant hill country, and when we climbed the 



214 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

bank we commonly found an irregular copse-wood 
skirting the river, the primitive having floated down 
stream long ago to the " King's navy.'' Some- 
times we saw the river road a quarter or half a mile 
distant, and the particolored Concord stage, with its 
cloud of dust, its van of earnest travelling faces, and 
its rear of dusty trunks, reminding us that the country 
had its places of rendezvous for restless Yankee men. 
There dwelt along at considerable distances on this 
interval a quiet agricultural and pastoral people, with 
every house its well, as we sometimes proved, and 
every household, though never so still and remote it 
appeared in the noontide, its dinner about these times. 
There they lived on, those New England people, 
farmer lives, father and grand-father and great-grand- 
father, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, 
and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant 
harvests, we did not learn what. They were con- 
tented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and 
where their lines had fallen. — 

Our uninquiring corpses lie more low 
Than our life's curiosity doth go. 

Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as 
Solomon in all his glory, so similar are the lives of 
men in all countries, and fraught with the same 
homely experiences. One half the world knows how 
the other half lives. 

About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack 
at Thornton's Ferry, and tasted of the waters of 
Naticook Brook on the same side, where French and 
his companions, whose grave we saw in Dunstable, 
were ambuscaded by the Indians. The humble vil- 
lage of Litchfield, with its steepleless meeting-house, 



TUESDA V. 215 

stood on the opposite or east bank, near where a 
dense grove of willows backed by maples skirted the 
shore. There also we noticed some shagbark trees, 
which, as they do not grow in Concord, were as 
strange a sight to us as the palm would be, whose 
fruit only we have seen. Our course now curved 
gracefully to the north, leaving a low flat shore on the 
Merrimack side, which forms a sort of harbor for 
canal boats. We observed some fair elms and par- 
ticularly large and handsome white-maples standing 
conspicuously on this interval, and the opposite shore, 
a quarter of a mile below, was covered with young 
elms and maples six inches high, which had probably 
sprung from the seeds which had been washed across. 
Some carpenters were at work here mending a scow 
on the green and sloping bank. The strokes of 
their mallets echoed from shore to shore, and up and 
down the river, and their tools gleamed in the sun a 
quarter of a mile from us, and we realized that boat- 
building was as ancient and honorable an art as agri- 
culture, and that there might be a naval as well as a 
pastoral life. The whole history of commerce was 
made manifest in that scow turned bottom upward on 
the shore. Thus did men begin to go down upon the 
sea in ships. We thought that it would be well for 
the traveller to build his boat on the bank of a stream, 
instead of finding a ferry or a bridge. In the Adven- 
tures of Henry the fur-trader, it is pleasant to read 
that when with his Indians he reached the shore of 
Ontario, they consumed two days in making two 
canoes of the bark of the elm tree, in which to trans- 
port themselves to Fort Niagara. It is a worthy 
incident in a journey, a delay as good as much rapid 
travelling. A good share of our interest in Xeno- 



2l6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

phon's story of his retreat is in the manoeuvres to get 
the army safely over the rivers, whether on rafts 
of logs or fagots, or on sheep-skins blown up. And 
where could they better afford to tarry meanwhile 
than on the banks of a river? 

As we glided past at a distance, these outdoor 
workmen appeared to have added some dignity to 
their labor by its very publicness. It was a part of 
the industry of nature, like the work of hornets and 
mud- wasps. — 

The waves slowly beat, 

Just to keep the noon sweet, 

And no sound is floated o'er, 

Save the mallet on shore, 

Which echoing on high 

Seems a-caulking the sky. 

The haze, the sun's dust of travel, had a lethean influ- 
ence on the land and its inhabitants, and all creatures 
resigned themselves to float upon the inappreciable 
tides of nature. 

Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze. 
Woven of Nature's richest stuffs. 
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea. 
Last conquest of the eye ; 
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust, 
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth, 
Ethereal estuary, frith of light. 
Breakers of air, billows of heat, 
Fine summer spray on inland seas ; 
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged, 
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned, 
From heath or stubble rising without song ; 
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields. 

The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest 
days, as that which has conquered and prevailed, 



TUESDA Y. 



217 



commends itself to us by its very antiquity and appar- 
ent solidity and necessity. Our weakness needs it, 
and our strength uses it. We cannot draw on our 
boots without bracing ourselves against it. If there 
were but one erect and solid standing tree in the 
woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and 
make sure of their footing. During the many hours 
which we spend in this waking sleep, the hand stands 
still on the face of the clock, and we grow like corn 
in the night. Men are as busy as the brooks or bees, 
and postpone everything to their busyness; as car- 
penters discuss politics between the strokes of the 
hammer while they are shingling a roof. 

This noontide was a fit occasion to make some 
pleasant harbor, and there read the journal of some 
voyageur like ourselves, not too moral nor inquisitive, 
and which would not disturb the noon ; or else some 
old classic, the very flower of all reading, which we 
had postponed to such a season 

" Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure." 

But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, con- 
tained only its well-thumbed Navigator for all litera- 
ture, and we were obliged to draw on our memory for 
these things. We naturally remembered Alexander 
Henry's Adventures here, as a sort of classic among 
books of American travel. It contains scenery and 
rough sketching of men and incidents enough to 
inspire poets for many years, and to my fancy is as 
full of sounding names as any page of history, — Lake 
Winnipeg, Hudson's Bay, Ottaway, and portages in- 
numerable ; Chipeways, Gens de Terres, Les Pilleurs, 
The Weepers ; with reminiscences of Hearne's jour- 



2l8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

ney, and the like ; an immense and shaggy but sincere 
country summer and winter, adorned with chains of 
lakes and rivers, covered with snows, with hemlocks 
and fir trees. There is a naturalness, an unpretend- 
ing and cold life in this traveller, as in a Canadian 
winter, what life was preserved through low tempera- 
tures and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart. 
He has truth and moderation worthy of the father of 
history, which belong only to an intimate experience, 
and he does not defer too much to literature. The 
unlearned traveller may quote his single line from the 
poets with as good right as the scholar. He too may 
speak of the stars, for he sees them shoot perhaps 
when the astronomer does not. The good sense of 
this author is very conspicuous. He is a traveller 
who does not exaggerate, but writes for the informa- 
tion of his readers, for science and for history. His 
story is told with as much good faith and directness 
as if it were a report to his brother traders, or the 
Directors of the Hudson Bay Company, and is fitly 
dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the 
argument to a great poem on the primitive state of 
the country and its inhabitants, and the reader imag- 
ines what in each case with the invocation of the 
Muse might be sung, and leaves off with suspended 
interest, as if the full account were to follow. In what 
school was this fur-trader educated ? He seems to 
travel the immense snowy country with such purpose 
only as the reader who accompanies him, and to the 
latter's imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily cre- 
ated to be the scene of his adventures. What is most 
interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the ma- 
terials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the 
North West, which it furnishes ; not the annals of the 



TUESDAY. 219 

country, but the natural facts, or peretmials, which are 
ever without date. When out of history the truth 
shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like 
withered leaves. 

The Souhegan, or Crooked river, as some translate 
it, comes in from the west about a mile and a half 
above Thornton's Ferry. Babboosuck Brook empties 
into it near its mouth. There are said to be some of 
the finest water privileges in the country still unim- 
proved on the former stream, at a short distance from 
the Merrimack. One spring morning, March 22, in 
the year 1677, an incident occurred on the banks 
of the river here, which is interesting to us as a slight 
memorial of an interview between two ancient tribes of 
men, one of which is now extinct, while the other, 
though it is still represented by a miserable remnant, 
has long since disappeared from its ancient hunting 
grounds. A Mr. James Parker at "Mr. Hinchmanne's 
farme ner Meremack," wrote thus " to the Honred 
Governer and Council at Bostown, Hast, Post Hast.'''' 

" Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning to in- 
forme me, and then went to Mr. Tyng's to informe 
him, that his son being on ye other sid of Meremack 
river over against Souhegan upon the 22 day of this 
instant, about tene of the clock in the morning, he 
discovered 15 Indians on this sid the river, which he 
soposed to be Mohokes by ther spech. He called 
to them ; they answered, but he could not understand 
ther spech ; and he having a conow ther in the river, 
he went to breck his conow that they might not have 
ani ues of it. In the mean time they shot about 
thirty guns at him, and he being much frighted 



220 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

fled, and come home forthwith to Nahamcock, [Paw- 
tucket Falls or Lowell] wher ther wigowames now 
stand." 

Penacooks and Mohawks ! ubique gentium sunt ? 
Where are they now ? — In the year 1670, a Mohawk 
warrior scalped a Naamkeak or Wamesit Indian 
maiden near where Lowell now stands. She, how- 
ever, recovered. Even as late as 1685, John Hogkins, 
a Penacook Indian, who describes his grand-father as 
having lived " at place called Malamake rever, other 
name chef Natukkog and Panukkog, that one rever 
great many names," wrote thus to the governor : — 

"May 15 th, 1685. 
" Honor governor my friend, — 

" You my friend I desire your worship and your 
power, because I hope you can do som great matters 
this one. I am poor and naked and I have no men 
at my place because I afraid allwayes Mohogs he will 
kill me every day and night. If your worship when 
please pray help me you no let Mohogs kill me at 
my place at Malamake river called Pannukkog and 
Natukkog, I will submit your worship and your power. 
— And now I want pouder and such alminishon shatt 
and guns, because I have forth at my hom and I plant 
theare. 

" This all Indian hand, but pray you do consider 
your humble servant, John Hogkins." 

Signed also by Simon Detogkom, King Hary, Sam 
Linis, Mr. Jorge Rodunnonukgus, John Owamosim- 
min, and nine other Indians, with their marks against 
their names. 



TUESDAY. 221 

But now, one hundred and fifty-four years having 
elapsed since the date of this letter, we went unalarmed 
on our way, without " breaking " our " conow/' reading 
the New England Gazetteer, and seeing no traces of 
" Mohogs " on the banks. 

The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed to- 
day to have borrowed its character from the noon. 

Where gleaming fields of haze 
Meet the voyageur's gaze, 
And above, the heated air 
Seems to make a river there, 
The pines stand up with pride 
By the Souhegan's side, 
And the hemlock and the larch 
With their triumphal arch 
Are waving o'er its march 

To the sea. 
No wind stirs its waves. 
But the spirits of the braves 

Hov'ring o'er. 
Whose antiquated graves 
Its still water laves 

On the shore. 
With an Indian's stealthy tread 
It goes sleeping in its bed, 
Without joy or grief, 
Or the rustle of a leaf, 
Without a ripple or a billow, 
Or the sigh of a willow, 
From the Lyndeboro' hills 
To the Merrimack mills. 
With a louder din 
Did its current begin, 
When melted the snow 
On the far mountain's brow, 
And the drops came together 
In that rainy weather. 
Experienced river, 



222 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Hast thou flowed forever ? 

Souhegan soundeth old, 

But the half is not told, 

What names hast thou borne 

In the ages far gone, 

When the Xanthus and Meander 

Commenced to wander. 

Ere the black bear haunted 

Thy red forest-floor, 
Or Nature had planted 

The pines by thy shore. 

During the heat of the day, we rested on a large 
island a mile above the mouth of this river, pastured 
by a herd of cattle, with steep banks and scattered 
elms and oaks, and a sufficient channel for canal boats 
on each side. When we made a fire to boil some rice 
for our dinner, the flames spreading amid the dry 
grass, and the smoke curling silently upward and cast- 
ing grotesque shadows on the ground seemed phenom- 
ena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up 
the stream without eifort, and as naturally as the wind 
and tide went down, not outraging the calm days by 
unworthy bustle or impatience. The woods on the 
neighboring shore were alive with pigeons, which 
were moving south looking for mast, but now, like 
ourselves, spending their noon in the shade. We 
could hear the slight wiry winnowing sound of their 
wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, 
and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They so- 
journed with us during the noontide, greater travellers 
far than we. You may frequently discover a single 
pair sitting upon the lower branches of the white pine 
in the depths of the wood, at this hour of the day, 
so silent and solitary, and with such a hermit-like 
appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its 



TUESDAY. 223 

skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the 
forests of Maine is still undigested in their crops. 
We obtained one of these handsome birds, which 
lingered too long upon its perch, and plucked and 
broiled it here with some other game, to be carried 
along for our supper ; for beside the provisions which 
we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river 
and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem 
to be putting this bird to its right use, to pluck off its 
feathers, and extract its entrails, and broil its carcass 
on the coals ; but we heroically persevered, neverthe- 
less, waiting for farther information. The same re- 
gard for Nature which excited our sympathy for her 
creatures, nerved our hands to carry through what we 
had begun. For we would be honorable to the party 
we deserted ; we would fulfil fate, and so at length, 
perhaps, detect the secret innocence of these inces- 
sant tragedies which Heaven allows. — 

" Too quick resolves do resolution wrong, 
What, part so soon to be divorced so long ? 
Things to be done are long to be debated ; 
Heaven is not day'd, Repentance is not dated." 

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet 
our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is 
the skilful swordsman who can give clean wounds, 
and not rip up his work with the other edge ? 

Nature herself has not provided the most graceful 
end for her creatures. What becomes of all these 
birds that people the air and forest for our solace- 
ment ? The sparrows seem always chipper, never 
infirm. We do not see their bodies lie about ; yet 
there is a tragedy at the end of each one of their 
lives. They must perish miserably ; not one of them 



224 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

is translated. True, " not a sparrow falleth to the 
ground without our Heavenly Father's knowledge," 
but they do fall, nevertheless. 

The carcasses of some poor squirrels, however, the 
same that frisked so merrily in the morning, which 
we had skinned and embowelled for our dinner, we 
abandoned in disgust, with tardy humanity, as too 
wretched a resource for any but starving men. It 
was to perpetuate the practice of a barbarous era. If 
they had been larger, our crime had been less. Their 
small red bodies, little bundles of red tissue, mere 
gobbets of venison, would not have "fattened fire." 
With a sudden impulse we threw them away, and 
washed our hands, and boiled some rice for our din- 
ner. "Behold the difference between the one who 
eateth flesh, and him to whom it belonged ! The 
first hath a momentary enjoyment, whilst the latter is 
deprived of existence ! " — " Who could commit so great 
a crime against a poor animal, who is fed only by 
the herbs which grow wild in the woods, and whose 
belly is burnt up with hunger ? " We remembered a 
picture of mankind in the hunter age, chasing hares 
down the mountains, O me miserable! Yet sheep and 
oxen are but larger squirrels, whose hides are saved 
and meat is salted, whose souls perchance are not so 
large in proportion to their bodies. 

There should always be some flowering and matur- 
ing of the fruits of nature in the cooking process. 
Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our 
imaginations as well as palates. In parched corn, 
for instance, there is a manifest sympathy between the 
bursting seed and the more perfect developments of 
vegetable life. It is a perfect flower with its petals, 
like the houstonia or anemone. On my warm hearth 



TUESDAY. 225 

these cerealian blossoms expanded ; here is the bank 
whereon they grew. Perhaps some such visible bless- 
ing would always attend the simple and wholesome 
repast. 

Here was that "pleasant harbor" which we had 
sighed for, where the weary voyageur could read the 
journal of some other sailor, whose bark had plowed, 
perchance, more famous and classic seas. At the 
tables of the gods, after feasting follow music and 
song ; we will recline now under these island trees, 
and for our minstrel call on 

ANACREON. 

" Nor has he ceased his charming song, but still that lyre, 
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades." 

Simonides Epigram on Anacreon. 

I lately met with an old volume from a London book- 
shop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a 
pleasure to read once more only the words, — Orpheus, 
— Linus, — Musaeus, — those faint poetic sounds and 
echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us mod- 
ern men ; and those hardly more substantial sounds, 
Mimnermus — Ibycus — Alcaeus — Stesichorus — Me- 
nander. They lived not in vain. We can converse 
with these bodiless fames without reserve or person- 
ality. 

I know of no studies so composing as those of the 
classical scholar. When we have sat down to them, 
life seems as still and serene as if it were very far off, 
and I believe it is not habitually seen from any com- 
mon platform so truly and unexaggerated as in the 
light of literature. In serene hours we contemplate the 



226 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

tour of the Greek and Latin authors with more 
pleasure than the traveller does the fairest scenery 
of Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more re- 
fined society ? That highway down from Homer and 
Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attractive than 
the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing 
with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving 
works, is like walking amid the stars and constella- 
tions, a high and by way serene to travel. Indeed, 
the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer 
in his habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed 
to obstruct the field of his vision, for the higher 
regions of literature, like astronomy, are above storm 
and darkness. 

But passing by these rumors of bards, let us pause 
for a moment at the Teian poet. 

There is something strangely modern about him. 
He is very easily turned into English. Is it that our 
lyric poets have resounded only that lyre, which would 
sound only light subjects, and which Simonides tells 
us does not sleep in Hades? His odes are like gems 
of pure ivory. They possess an ethereal and evanes- 
cent beauty like summer evenings, o xp>; o"^ vouv voov 
avOei, which you must perceive with the flower of the 
mind, — and show how slight a beauty could be ex- 
pressed. You have to consider them, as the stars of 
lesser magnitude, with the side of the eye, and look 
aside from them to behold them. They charm us by 
their serenity and freedom from exaggeration and 
passion, and by a certain flowerlike beauty, which 
does not propose itself, but must be approached and 
studied like a natural object. But perhaps their chief 
merit consists in the lightness and yet security of their 
tread ; 



TUESDA Y. 227 

" The young and tender stalk 
Ne'er bends when they do walk." 

True, our nerves are never strung by them; —it is 
too constantly the sound of the lyre, and never the 
note of the trumpet ; but they are not gross, as has 
been presumed, but always elevated above the sensual. 

Perhaps these are the best that have come down 
to us. 

ON HIS LYRE. 

I wish to sing the Atridse, 

And Cadmus I wish to sing; 

But my lyre sounds 

Only love with its chords. 

Lately I changed the strings 

And all the lyre ; 

And I began to sing the labors 

Of Hercules; but my lyre 

Resounded loves. 

Farewell, henceforth, for me. 

Heroes! for my lyre 

Sings only loves. 



TO A SWALLOW. 

Thou indeed, dear swallow, 
Yearly going and coming, 
In summer weavest thy nest. 
And in winter go'st disappearing 
Either to Nile or to Memphis. 
But Love always weaveth 
His nest in my heart. * * * 



ON A SILVER CUP. 

Turning the silver, 
Vulcan, make for me, 
Not indeed a panoply. 



228 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

For what are battles to me ? 

But a hollow cup, 

As deep as thou canst. 

And make for me in it 

Neither stars, nor wagons, 

Nor sad Orion ; 

What are the Pleiades to me ? 

What the shining Bootes ? 

Make vines for me, 

And clusters of grapes in it. 

And of gold Love and Bathyllus 

Treading the grapes 

With the fair Lyaeus. 



ON HIMSELF. 

Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes 

And he the battles of Troy, 

But I of my own defeats. 

No horse have wasted me, 

Nor foot, nor ships ; 

But a new and different host, 

From eyes smiting me. 



TO A DOVE. 

Lovely dove. 

Whence, whence dost thou fly ? 

Whence, running on air. 

Dost thou waft and diffuse 

So many sweet ointments ? 

Who art ? What thy errand ? — 

Anacreon sent me 

To a boy, to Bathyllus, 

Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all. 

Cythere has sold me 

For one little song, 

And I 'm doing this service 

For Anacreon. 

And now, as you see, 



TUB SB A Y. 229 

I bear letters from him. 

And he says that directly 

He 'II make me free, 

But though he release me, 

His slave I will tarry with him. 

For why should I fly 

Over mountains and fields, 

And perch upon trees. 

Eating some wild thing ? 

Now indeed I eat bread. 

Plucking it from the hands 

Of Anacreon himself; 

And he gives me to drink 

The wine which he tastes, 

And drinking, I dance. 

And shadow my master's 

Face with my wings ; 

And, going to rest, 

On the lyre itself I sleep. 

That is all ; get thee gone. 

Thou hast made me more talkative, 

Man, than a crow. 



ON LOVE. 

Love walking swiftly. 

With hyacinthine staff, 

Bade me to take a run with him ; 

And hastening through swift torrents. 

And woody places, and over precipices, 

A water-snake stung me. 

And my heart leaped up to 

My mouth, and I should have fainted ; 

But Love fanning my brows 

With his soft wings, said, 

Surely, thou art not able to love. 



ON WOMEN. 

Nature has given horns 

To bulls, and hoofs to horses, 



2^0 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Swiftness to hares, 

To lions yawning teeth, 

To fishes swimming, 

To birds flight, 

To men wisdom. 

For woman she had nothing beside ; 

What then does she give ? Beauty, — 

Instead of all shields, 

Instead of all spears ; 

And she conquers even iron 

And fire, who is beautiful. 

ON LOVERS. 

Horses have the mark 

Of fire on their sides. 

And some have distinguished 

The Parthian men by their crests ; 

So I, seeing lovers, 

Know them at once. 

For they have a certain slight 

Brand on their hearts. 

TO A SWALLOW. 

What dost thou wish me to do to thee —- 

What, thou loquacious swallow ? 

Dost thou wish me taking thee 

Thy light pinions to clip ? 

Or rather to pluck out 

Thy tongue from within, 

As that Tereus did ? 

Why with thy notes in the dawn 

Hast thou plundered Bathyllus 

From my beautiful dreams ? 

TO A COLT. 

Thracian colt, why at me 
Looking aslant with thy eyes, 



TUESDAY. 231 



Dost thou cruelly flee, 
And think that I know nothing wise ? 
Know I could well 
Put the bridle on thee, 
And holding the reins, turn 
Round the bounds of the course. 
But now thou browsest the meads, 
And gambolling lightly dost play. 
For thou hast no skillful horseman 
Mounted upon thy back. 



CUPID WOUNDED. 

Love once among roses 
Saw not 

A sleeping bee, but was stung ; 
• And being wounded in the finger 

Of his hand, cried for pain. 
Running as well as flying 
To the beautiful Venus, 
I am killed, mother, said he, 
I am killed, and I die. 
A little serpent has stung me, 
Winged, which they call 
A bee — the husbandmen. 
And she said. If the sting 
Of a bee afflicts you, 
How, think you, are they afflicted, 
Love, whom you smite ? 

Late in the afternoon, for we had lingered long 
on the island, we raised our sail for the first time, 
and for a short hour the south-west wind was our 
ally ; but it did not please Heaven to abet us long. 
With one sail raised we swept slowly up the eastern 
side of the stream, steering clear of the rocks, while 
from the top of a hill which formed the opposite 
bank, some lumberers were rolling down timber to 



232 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

be rafted down the stream. We could see their axes 
and levers gleaming in the sun, and the logs came 
down with a dust and a rumbling sound, which was 
reverberated through the woods beyond us on our 
side, like the roar of artillery. But Zephyr soon took 
us out of sight and hearing of this commerce. Hav- 
ing passed Read's Ferry, and another island called 
McGaw's Island, we reached some rapids called 
Moore's Falls, and entered on " that section of the 
river, nine miles in extent, converted, by law, into 
the Union Canal, comprehending in that space six 
distinct falls ; at each of which, and at several inter- 
mediate places, work has been done." After pass- 
ing Moore's Falls by means of locks, we again had 
recourse to our oars, and went merrily on our way, 
driving the small sand-piper from rock to rock before 
us, and sometimes rowing near enough to a cottage 
on the bank, though they were few and far between, 
to see the sun-flowers, and the seed vessels of the 
poppy, like small goblets filled with the water of 
Lethe, before the door, but without disturbing the 
sluggish household behind. Thus we held on, sail- 
ing or dipping our way along with the paddle up this 
broad river, — smooth and placid, flowing over con- 
cealed rocks, where we could see the pickerel lying 
low in the transparent water, — eager to double some 
distant cape, to make some great bend as in the 
life of man, and see what new perspective would 
open; looking far into a new country, broad and 
serene, the cottages of settlers seen afar for the 
first time, yet with the moss of a century on their 
roofs, and the third or fourth generation in their 
shadow. Strange was it to consider how the sun 
and the summer, the buds of spring and the seared 



TUESDAY. 233 

leaves of autumn, were related to these cabins along 
the shore; how all the rays which paint the land- 
scape radiate from them, and the flight of the crow 
and the gyrations of the hawk have reference to 
their roofs. Still the ever rich and fertile shores 
accompanied us, fringed with vines and alive with 
small birds and frisking squirrels, the edge of some 
farmer's field or widow's wood-lot ; or wilder, per- 
chance, where the muskrat, the little medicine of the 
river, drags itself along stealthily over the alder 
leaves and mussel shells, and man and the memory 
of man are banished far. 

At length the unwearied, never sinking shore, still 
holding on without break, with its cool copses and 
serene pasture grounds, tempted us to disembark ; 
and we adventurously landed on this remote coast, 
to survey it, unknown to any human inhabitant prob- 
ably to this day. But we still remember the gnarled 
and hospitable oaks which grew even there for our 
entertainment, and were no strangers to us, the lonely 
horse in his pasture, and the patient cows, whose 
path to the river, so judiciously chosen to overcome 
the difficulties of the way, we followed, and disturbed 
their ruminations in the shade ; and, above all, the 
cool free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously 
proifering their fruit to us, though still green and 
crude, the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, 
still was not poison, but New English too, brought 
hither its ancestors by ours once. These gentler 
trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to 
the otherwise barbarian land. Still further on we 
scrambled up the rocky channel of a brook, which 
had long served nature for a sluice there, leaping 
like it from rock to rock through tangled woods, at 



234 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

the bottom of a ravine, which grew darker and darker, 
and more and more hoarse the murmurs of the stream, 
until we reached the ruins of a mill, where now the 
ivy grew, and the trout glanced through the 
crumbling flume; and there we imagined what had 
been the dreams and speculations of some early 
settler. But the waning day compelled us to em- 
bark once more, and redeem this wasted time with 
long and vigorous sweeps over the rippling stream. 

It was still wild and solitary, except that at intervals 
of a mile or two the roof of a cottage might be seen 
over the bank. This region, as we read, was once 
famous for the manufacture of straw bonnets of the 
Leghorn kind, of which it claims the invention in 
these parts, and occasionally some industrious damsel 
tripped down to the water's edge, as it appeared, to 
put her straw a-soak, and stood awhile to watch the 
retreating voyageurs, and catch the fragment of a boat 
song which we had made, wafted over the water. 

Thus, perchance, the Indian hunter, 

Many a lagging year agone, 
Gliding o'er thy rippling waters, 

Lowly hummed a natural song. 

Now the sun's behind the willows, 
Now he gleams along the waves, 

Faintly o'er the wearied billows 
Come the spirits of the braves. 

Just before sundown we reached some more falls 
in the town of Bedford, where some stone-masons 
were employed repairing the locks in a solitary part 
of the river. They were interested in our adventures, 
especially one young man of our own age, who in- 
quired at first if we were bound up to '' 'Skeag," and 



TUESDAY. 235 

when he had heard our story, and examined our outfit, 
asked us other questions, but temperately still, and 
always turning to his work again, though as if it were 
become his duty. It was plain that he would like to 
go with us, and as he looked up the river, many a dis- 
tant cape and wooded shore were reflected in his eye, 
as well as in his thoughts. When we were ready he 
left his work, and helped us through the locks with a 
sort of quiet enthusiasm, telling us we were at Coos 
Falls, and we could still distinguish the strokes of his 
chisel for many sweeps after we had left him. 

We wished to camp this night on a large rock in 
the middle of the stream, just above these falls, but 
the want of fuel, and the difficulty of fixing our tent 
firmly, prevented us ; so we made our bed on the main 
land opposite, on the west bank, in the town of Bed- 
ford, in a retired place, as we supposed, there being 
no house in sight. 



WEDNESDAY. 

" Man is man's foe and destiny." 



Cotton. 



Early this morning, as we were rolling up our 
buffaloes and loading our boat amid the dew, while 
our embers were still smoking, the masons who worked 
at the locks, and whom we had seen crossing the river 
in their boat the evening before while we were exam- 
ining the rock, came upon us as they were going to 
their work, and we found that we had pitched our 
tent directly in their path to their boat. This was 
the only time that we were observed on our camping 
ground. Thus, far from the beaten highways and the 
dust and din of travel, we beheld the country privately, 
yet freely, and at our leisure. Other roads do some 
violence to Nature, and bring the traveller to stare at 
her, but the river steals into the scenery it traverses 
without intrusion, silently creating and adorning it, 
and is as free to come and go as the zephyr. 

As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before 
sunrise, the smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, 
was moping along its edge, or stood probing the mud 
for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so demurely 
at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like 
a wrecker in his storm coat, looking out for wrecks of 
snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limp- 
ing flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a rod 
of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and 
now our steady approach compels him to seek a new 
236 



WEDNESDAY. 23/ 

retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school, 
and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the 
other elements ; the relic of a twilight ante-diluvian 
age which yet inhabits these bright American rivers 
with us Yankees. There is something venerable in 
this melancholy and contemplative race of birds, 
which may have trodden the earth while it was yet 
in a slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks 
too are still visible on the stones. It still lingers into 
our glaring summers, bravely supporting its fate with- 
out sympathy from man, as if it looked forward to 
some second advent of which he has no assurance. 
One wonders if, by its patient study by rocks and 
sandy capes, it has wrested the whole of her secret 
from Nature yet. What a rich experience it must 
have gained, standing on one leg and looking out 
from its dull eye so long on sunshine and rain, moon 
and stars ! What could it tell of stagnant pools and 
reeds and dank night-fogs? It would be worth the 
while to look closely into the eye which has been 
open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, 
its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own 
soul must be a bright invisible green. I have seen 
these birds stand by the half dozen together in the 
shallower water along the shore, with their bills thrust 
into the mud at the bottom, probing for food, the 
whole head being concealed, while the neck and body 
formed an arch above the water. 

Cohass Brook, the outlet of Massabesic Pond, — 
which last is five or six miles distant, and contains 
fifteen hundred acres, being the largest body of fresh 
water in Rockingham county, — comes in near here 
from the east. Rowing between Manchester and Bed- 
ford, we passed, at an early hour, a ferry and some 



238 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

falls, called Goff's Falls, the Indian Cohasset, where 
there is a small village, and a handsome green islet 
in the middle of the stream. From Bedford and 
Merrimac have been boated the bricks of which Lowell 
is made. About twenty years before, as they told us, 
one Moore, of Bedford, having clay on his farm, con- 
tracted to furnish eight millions of bricks to the 
founders of that city within two years. He fulfilled 
his contract in one year, and since then bricks have 
been the principal export from these towns. The 
farmers found thus a market for their wood, and 
when they had brought a load to the kilns, they 
could cart a load of bricks to the shore, and so make 
a profitable day's work of it. Thus all parties were 
benefited. It was worth the while to see the place 
where Lowell was "dug out." So likewise Man- 
chester is being built of bricks made still higher up 
the river at Hooksett. 

There might be seen here on the bank of the 
Merrimack, near Goff 's Falls, in what is now the town 
of Bedford, famous " for hops and for its fine domestic 
manufactures," some graves of the aborigines. The 
land still bears this scar here, and time is slowly 
crumbling the bones of a race. Yet without fail every 
spring since they first fished and hunted here, the 
brown thrasher has heralded the morning from a birch 
or alder spray, and the undying race of reed-birds 
still rustles through the withering grass. But these 
bones rustle not. These mouldering elements are 
slowly preparing for another metamorphosis, to serve 
new masters, and what was the Indian's will ere long 
be the white man's sinew. 

We learned that Bedford was not so famous for 
hops as formerly, since the price is fluctuating, and 



WEDNESDAY. 239 

poles are now scarce. Yet if the traveller goes back 
a few miles from the river, the hop kilns will still 
excite his curiosity. 

There were few incidents in our voyage this fore- 
noon, though the river was now more rocky and the 
falls more frequent than before. It was a pleasant 
change, after rowing incessantly for many hours, to 
lock ourselves through in some retired place, — for 
commonly there was no lock-man at hand, — one 
sitting in the boat, while the other, sometimes with 
no little labor and heave-yoing, opened and shut the 
gates, waiting patiently to see the locks fill. We 
did not once use the wheels which we had provided. 
Taking advantage of the eddy, we were sometimes 
floated up to the locks almost in the face of the falls ; 
and, by the same cause, any floating timber was car- 
ried round in a circle and repeatedly drawn into the 
rapids before it finally went down the stream. These 
old gray structures, with their quiet arms stretched 
over the river in the sun, appeared like natural objects 
in the scenery, and the king-fisher and sand-piper 
alighted on them as readily as on stakes or rocks. 

We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours, 
until the sun had got high in the sky, our thoughts 
monotonously beating time to our oars. For out- 
ward variety there was only the river and the receding 
shores, a vista continually opening behind and closing 
before us, as we sat with our backs up stream, and for 
inward such thoughts as the muses grudgingly lent 
us. We were always passing some low inviting shore 
or some overhanging bank, on which, however, we 
never landed. — 

Such near aspects had we 
Of our life's scenery. 



240 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

It might be seen by what tenure men held the 
earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a 
smaller ocean creek within the land, where men niay 
steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For 
my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly 
have known how large a portion of our globe is water, 
my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet 
I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of 
my Snug Harbor. From an old ruined fort on Staten 
Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel 
whose name I had read in the morning through the 
telegraph glass, when she first came upon the coast, 
and her hull heaved up and glistened in the sun, from 
the moment when the pilot and most adventurous 
news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the nar- 
row channel of the wide outer bay, till she was 
boarded by the health officer, and took her station at 
Quarantine, or held on her unquestioned course to 
the wharves of New York. It was interesting, too, 
to watch the less adventurous news-man, who made 
his assault as the vessel swept through the Narrows, 
defying plague and quarantine law, and fastening his 
little cock boat to her huge side, clambered up and 
disappeared in the cabin. And then I could imagine 
what momentous news was being imparted by the 
captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that 
Asia, Africa, Europe — were all sunk ; for which at 
length he pays the price, and is seen descending the 
ship's side with his bundle of newspapers, but not 
where he first got up, for these arrivers do not stand 
still to gossip, — and he hastes away with steady 
sweeps to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder, 
and we shall erelong read something startling, — " By 
the latest arrival," — " by the good ship ." — On 



WEDNESDA V. 24 1 

Sunday I beheld from some interior hill the long 
procession of vessels getting to sea, reaching from 
the city wharves through the Narrows, and past the 
Hook, quite to the ocean-stream, far as the eye could 
reach, with stately march and silken sails, all counting 
on lucky voyages, but each time some of the number, 
no doubt, destined to go to Davy's locker, and never 
come on this coast again. — And again, in the evening 
of a pleasant day, it was my amusement to count the 
sails in sight. But as the setting sun continually 
brought more and more to light, still further in the 
horizon, the last count always had the advantage, till 
by the time the last rays streamed over the sea, I had 
doubled and trebled my first number ; though I could 
no longer class them all under the several heads of 
ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and sloops, but most 
were faint generic vessels only. And then the tem- 
perate twilight light, perchance, revealed the floating 
home of some sailor whose thoughts were already 
alienated from this American coast, and directed to- 
wards the Europe of our dream.s. — I have stood upon 
the same hill-top when a thunder shower rolling down 
from the Catskills and Highlands passed over the 
island, deluging the land, and when it had suddenly 
left us in sunshine, have seen it overtake successively 
with its huge shadow and dark descending wall of 
rain the vessels in the bay. Their bright sails were 
suddenly drooping and dark like the sides of barns, 
and they seemed to shrink before the storm ; while 
still far beyond them on the sea, through this dark 
veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those vessels which 
the storm had not yet reached. — And at midnight, 
when all around and overhead was darkness, I have 
seen a field of trembling silvery light far out on the 



242 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

sea, the reflection of the moonlight from the ocean, as 
if beyond the precincts of our night, where the moon 
traversed a cloudless heaven, — and sometimes a 
dark speck in its midst, where some fortunate vessel 
was pursuing its happy voyage by night. 

But to us [river sailors the sun never rose out of 
ocean waves, but from some green coppice, and went 
down behind some dark mountain line. We, too, were 
but dwellers on the shore, hke the bittern of the 
morning, and our pursuit the wrecks of snails and 
cockles. Nevertheless, we were contented to know 
the better one fair particular shore. 

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, 

As near the ocean's edge as I can go, 
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach, 

Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. 

My sole employment 't is, and scrupulous care, 
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides. 

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, 
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides. 

I have but few companions on the shore, 
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea, 

Yet oft I think the ocean they 've sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse. 
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view, 

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 

And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. 

The small houses which were scattered along the 
river at intervals of a mile or more, were commonly 
out of sight to us, but sometimes when we rowed near 
the shore, we heard the peevish note of a hen, or 
some slight domestic sound, which betrayed them. 



WEDNESDA V. 243 

The lock-men's houses were particularly well placed, 
retired, and high, always at falls or rapids, and com- 
manding the pleasantest reaches of the river, — for it 
is generally wider and more lake-like just above a fall, 
— and there they wait for boats. These humble 
dwellings, homely and sincere, in which a hearth was 
still the essential part, were more pleasing to our eyes 
than palaces or castles would have been. In the noon 
of these days, as we have said, we occasionally climbed 
the banks and approached these houses, to get a glass 
of water and make acquaintance with their inhabit- 
ants. High in the leafy bank, surrounded commonly 
by a small patch of corn and beans, squashes and 
melons, with sometimes a graceful hop-yard on one 
side, and some running vine over the windows, they 
appeared like bee-hives set to gather honey for a 
summer. I have not read of any Arcadian life which 
surpasses the actual luxury and serenity of these New 
England dwellings. For the outward gilding, at 
least, the age is golden enough. As you approach 
the sunny door-way, awakening the echoes by your 
steps, still no sound from these barracks of repose, 
and you fear that the gentlest knock may seem rude 
to the oriental dreamers. The door is opened, per- 
chance, by some Yankee-Hindoo woman, whose 
small-voiced but sincere hospitality, out of the bot- 
tomless depths of a quiet nature, has travelled quite 
round to the opposite side, and fears only to obtrude 
its kindness. You step over the white-scoured floor 
to the bright " dresser," lightly, as if afraid to disturb 
the devotions of the household, — for oriental dynas- 
ties appear to have passed away since the dinner 
table was last spread here, — and thence to the fre- 
quented curb, where you see your long-forgotten, 



244 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

unshaven face at the bottom, in juxtaposition with 
new-made butter and the trout in the well. " Perhaps 
you would like some molasses and ginger,^' suggests 
the faint noon voice. Sometimes there sits the 
brother who follows the sea, their representative man ; 
who knows only how far it is to the nearest port, no 
more distances, all the rest is sea and distant capes, 
— patting the dog, or dandling the kitten in arms 
that were stretched by the cable and the oar, pulling 
against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at 
the stranger half pleased, half astonished, with a 
mariner's eye, as if he were a dolphin within cast. 
If men will believe it, sua si bona norint, there are no 
more quiet Tempes, nor more poetic and Arcadian 
lives, than may be lived in these New England dwell- 
ings. We thought that the employment of their 
inhabitants by day would be to tend the flowers and 
herds, and at night, like the shepherds of old, to clus- 
ter and give names to the stars from the river banks. 
We passed a large and densely wooded island this 
forenoon, between Short's and Griffith's Falls, the 
fairest which we had met with, with a handsome grove 
of elms at its head. If it had been evening we should 
have been glad to camp there. Not long after one or 
two more occurred. The boatmen told us that the 
current had recently made important changes here. 
An island always pleases my imagination, even the 
smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of 
the globe. I have a fancy for building my hut on one. 
Even a bare grassy isle which I can see entirely over 
at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm 
for me. It is commonly the offspring of the junction 
of two rivers, whose currents bring down and deposit 
their respective sands in the eddy at their confluence, 



WEDNESDAY. 245 

as it were the womb of a continent. By what a deli- 
cate and far-fetched contribution every island is made! 
What an enterprise of Nature thus to lay the founda- 
tions of and to build up the future continent, of golden 
and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like 
industry ! Pindar gives the following account of the 
origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene 
was settled by Battus. Triton, in the form of Eu- 
rypylus, presents a clod to Euphemus, one of the 
Argonauts, as they are about to return home. — 

" He knew of our haste, 
And immediately seizing a clod 
With his right hand, strove to give it 
As a chance stranger's gift. 

Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore, 
Stretching hand to hand, 
Received the mystic clod. 
But I hear it sinking from the deck. 
Go with the sea brine 
At evening, accompanying the watery sea. 
Often indeed I urged the careless 
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot. 
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya 
Is spilled before its hour." 

It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how 
Helius, or the Sun, looked down into the sea one day, 
— when perchance his rays were first reflected from 
some increasing ghttering sand-bar, — and saw the 
fair and fruitful island of Rhodes 

" Springing up from the bottom, 
Capable of feeding many men and suitable for flocks ; " 



" The island sprang from the watery 

Sea ; and the Genial Father of penetrating beams, 
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it." 



246 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

The shifting islands ! who would not be willing that 
his house should be undermined by such a foe ! The 
inhabitants of an island can tell what currents formed 
the land which he cultivates ; and his earth is still 
being created or destroyed. There before his door, 
perchance, still empties the stream which brought 
down the material of his farm ages before, and is still 
bringing it down or washing it away, — the graceful, 
gentle robber! 

Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, or 
Sparkling Water, emptying in on our left, and heard 
the Falls of Amoskeag above. Large quantities of 
lumber, as we read in the gazetteer, were still annu- 
ally floated down the Piscataquoag to the Merrimack, 
and there are many fine mill privileges on it. Just 
above the mouth of this river we passed the artificial 
falls where the canals of the Manchester Manufacturing 
Company discharge themselves into the Merrimack. 
They are striking enough to have a name, and, with 
the scenery of a Bashpish, would be visited from far 
and near. The water falls thirty or forty feet over 
seven or eight steep and narrow terraces of stone, 
probably to break its force, and is converted into 
one mass of foam. This canal water did not seem to 
be the worse for the wear, but foamed and fumed as 
purely, and boomed as savagely and impressively, as 
a mountain torrent, and though it came from under 
a factory, we saw a rainbow here. These are now 
the Amoskeag Falls, removed a mile down stream. 
But we did not tarry to examine them minutely, 
making haste to get past the village here collected, 
and out of hearing of the hammer which was laying 
the foundation of another Lowell on the banks. 
At the time of our voyage Manchester was a village 



WEDNESDA Y. 247 

of about two thousand inhabitants, where we landed 
for a moment to get some cool water, and where an 
inhabitant told us that he was accustomed to go 
across the river into Goffstown for his water. But 
now, after nine years, as I have been told and in- 
deed have witnessed, it contains sixteen thousand 
inhabitants. From a hill on the road between Goffs- 
town and Hooksett, four miles distant, I have since 
seen a thunder shower pass over, and the sun break 
out and shine on a city there, where I had landed nine 
years before in the fields to get a draught of water ; 
and there was waving the flag of its museum, — 
where "the only perfect skeleton of a Greenland or 
river whale in the United States " was to be seen, 
and I also read in its directory of a " Manchester 
Athenaeum and Gallery of the Fine Arts." 

According to the gazetteer, the descent of Amos- 
keag Falls, which are the most considerable in the 
Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in half a mile. We 
locked ourselves through here with much ado, sur- 
mounting the successive watery steps of this river's 
stair-case in the midst of a crowd of villagers, 
jumping into the canal, to their amusement, to save 
our boat from upsetting, and consuming much river 
water in our service. Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is 
said to mean " great fishing place." It was here- 
abouts that the Sachem Wannalancet resided. Tra- 
dition says that his tribe, when at war with the 
Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the cavities of 
the rocks in the upper part of these falls. The Indians 
who hid their provisions in these holes, and affirmed 
"that God had cut them out for that purpose," 
understood their origin and use better than the 
Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the 



248 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

last century, speaking of these very holes, declare 
that "they seem plainly to be artificial." Similar 
" pot-holes " may be seen at the Stone Flume on 
this river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows' Falls on the 
Connecticut, and in the limestone rock at Shelburne 
Falls on Deerfield river in Massachusetts, and more 
or less generally about all falls. Perhaps the most 
remarkable curiosity of this kind in New England is 
the well known Basin on the Pemigewasset, one of 
the head-waters of this river, twenty by thirty feet 
in extent and proportionably deep, with a smooth 
and rounded brim, and filled with a cold, pellucid 
and greenish water. At Amoskeag the river is 
divided into many separate torrents and trickling 
rills by the rocks, and its volume is so much re- 
duced by the drain of the canals that it does not 
fill its bed. There are many pot-holes here on a 
rocky island which the river washes over in high 
freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where I first ob- 
served them, they are from one foot to four or five 
in diameter, and as many in depth, perfectly round and 
regular, with smooth and gracefully curved brims, 
like goblets. Their origin is apparent to the most 
careless observer. A stone which the current has 
washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as 
on a pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the 
course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, 
and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones 
which are drawn into this trap and doomed to re- 
volve there for an indefinite period, doing Sisyphus- 
like penance for stony sins, until they either wear 
out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or 
else are released by some revolution of nature. 
There lie the stones of various sizes, from a pebble 



WEDNESDA Y. 249 



rested from their labor only since the spring, and 
some higher up which have lain still and dry for 
ages, — we notice some here at least sixteen feet 
above the present level of the water, — while others 
are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any sea- 
son. In one instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have 
worn quite through the rock, so that a portion of 
the river leaks through in anticipation of the fall. 
Some of these pot-holes at Amoskeag, in a very 
hard brown stone, had an oblong cylindrical stone 
of the same material loosely fitting them. One, as 
much as fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diam- 
eter, which was worn quite through to the water, 
had a huge rock of the same material, smooth but 
of irregular form, lodged in it. Everywhere there 
were the rudiments or the wrecks of a dimple in 
the rock ; the rocky shells of whirlpools. As if, by 
force of example and sympathy after so many lessons, 
the rocks, the hardest material, had been endeavor- 
ing to whirl or flow into the forms of the most fluid. 
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel 
tools, but the gentle touches of air and water work- 
ing at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. 

Not only have some of these basins been forming 
for countless ages, but others exist which must have 
been completed in a former geological period. There 
are some, we are told, in the town of Canaan in this 
State, with the stones still in them, on the height of 
land between the Merrimack and Connecticut, and 
nearly a thousand feet above these rivers, proving 
that the mountains and the rivers have changed places. 
There lie the stones which completed their revolutions 
perhaps before thoughts began to revolve in the brain 



2S0 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

of man. The periods of Hindoo and Chinese history, 
though they reach back to the time when the race of 
mortals is confounded with the race of gods, are as 
nothing compared with the periods which these stones 
have inscribed. That which commenced a rock when 
time was young, shall conclude a pebble in the une- 
qual contest. With such expense of time and natural 
forces are our very paving stones produced. They 
teach us lessons, these dumb workers ; verily there are 
" sermons in stones and books in the running streams." 
In these very holes the Indians hid their provisions ; 
but now there is no bread, but only its old neighbor 
stones at the bottom. Who knows how many races 
they have served thus? By as simple a law, some 
accidental by-law, perchance, our system itself was 
made ready for its inhabitants. 

These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, 
for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of 
heroes and the temples of the gods which may once 
have stood on the banks of this river, are now, at any 
rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The mur- 
mur of unchronicled nations has died away along 
these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester 
are on the trail of the Indian. 

The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects 
no little dignity on Nature herself; that from some 
particular hill the Roman once looked out on the sea. 
She need not be ashamed of the vestiges of her 
children. How gladly the antiquary informs us that 
their vessels penetrated into this frith, or up that river 
of some remote isle ! Their military monuments still 
remain on the hills and under the sod of the valleys. 
The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legi- 
ble characters in every quarter of the old world, and 



WEDNESDAY. 25 1 

but to-day, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose in- 
scription repeats and confirms their fame. Some 
'''■JiidcBa Capta^^ with a woman mourning under a 
palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration 
confirms the pages of history. 

" Rome living was the world's sole ornament ; 

And dead is now the world's sole monument." 

***** 

" With her own weight down pressed now she lies, 

And by her heaps her hugeness testifies." 

If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism 
are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and 
see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the 
circular marks made by the shields taken from the 
enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended 
there. We have not far to seek for living and un- 
questionable evidence. The very dust takes shape 
and confirms some story which we had read. As 
Fuller said, commenting on the zeal of Camden, " A 
broken urn is a whole evidence ; or an old gate still 
surviving out of which the city is run out." When 
Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly 
belonged to the Athenians, and not to the Mega- 
reans, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed 
that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of 
their dead to the same side with the Athenians, but 
the Megareans to the opposite side. There they 
were to be interrogated. 

Some minds are as little logical or argumentative 
as nature ; they can offer no reason or " guess," but 
they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible fact. If 
a historical question arises, they cause the tombs to 
be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces 



252 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

the reason and the understanding at the same time. 
Of such sort is always the only pertinent question and 
the only unanswerable reply. 

Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient 
and durable, and as useful, as any ; rocks at least as 
well covered with moss, and a soil which, if it is virgin, 
is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What 
if we cannot read Rome, or Greece, Etruria, or 
Carthage, or Egypt, or Babylon, on these; are our 
cliffs bare? The lichen on the rocks is a rude and 
simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature 
suspended there. Still hangs her wrinkled trophy. 
And here too the poet's eye may still detect the brazen 
nails which fastened Time's inscriptions, and if he has 
the gift, decipher them by this clue. The walls that 
fence our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less 
the Parthenon itself, are all built of ruins. Here 
may be heard the din of rivers, and ancient winds 
which have long since lost their names sough through 
our woods ; — the first faint sounds of spring, older 
than the summer of Athenian glory, the titmouse lisp- 
ing in the wood, the jay's scream and blue-bird's 
warble, and the hum of 

" bees that fiy 
About the laughing blossoms of sallowy." 

Here is the gray dawn for antiquity, and our to-mor- 
row's future should be at least paulo-post to theirs 
which we have put behind us. There are the red- 
maple and birchen leaves, old runes which are not yet 
deciphered ; catkins, pine-cones, vines, oak-leaves, 
and acorns ; the very things themselves, and not 
their forms in stone, — so much the more ancient and 
venerable. And even to the current summer there has 



WEDNESDAY. 253 

come down tradition of a hoary-headed master of all 
art, who once filled every field and grove with statues 
and god-like architecture, of every design which 
Greece has lately copied ; whose ruins are now min- 
gled with the dust, and not one block remains upon 
another. The century sun and unwearied rain have 
wasted them, till not one fragment from that quarry 
now exists ; and poets perchance will feign that gods 
sent down the material from heaven. 

What though the traveller tell us of the ruins of 
Egypt, are we so sick or idle, that we must sacrifice 
our America and to-day to some man's ill-remembered 
and indolent story ? Carnac and Luxor are but names, 
or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand, 
and at length a wave of the Mediterranean sea, are 
needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their 
grandeur. Carnac ! Carnac ! here is Carnac for me. 
I behold the columns of a larger and purer temple. 

This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome 
Shelters the measuring art and measurer's home. 
Behold these flowers, let us be up with time, 
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago, 
Erect ourselves and let those columns he. 
Not stoop to raise a foil against the sky. 
Where is the spirit of that time but in 
This present day, perchance this present line ? 
Three thousand years ago are not agone, 
They are still lingering in this summer morn, 
And Memnon's Mother sprightly greets us now, 
Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow. 
If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain, 
To enjoy our opportunities they remain. 

In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Passacona- 
way, who was seen by Gookin " at Pawtucket, when 



254 ^ ^EEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

he was about one hundred and twenty years old." He 
was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained 
his people from going to war with the English. They 
believed " that he could make water burn, rocks move, 
and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a 
flaming man ; that in winter he could raise a green 
leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and produce a living 
snake from the skin of a dead one." In 1660, accord- 
ing to Gookin, at a great feast and dance, he made 
his farewell speech to his people, in which he said, 
that as he was not likely to see them met together 
again, he would leave them this word of advice, to 
take heed how they quarrelled with their English 
neighbors, for though they might do them much mis- 
chief at first, it would prove the means of their own 
destruction. He himself, he said, had been as much 
an enemy to the English at their first coming as any, 
and had used all his arts to destroy them, or at least to 
prevent their settlement, but could by no means effect 
it. Gookin thought that he "possibly might have 
such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon Balaam, 
who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said ' Surely there is no 
enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divi- 
nation against Israel.' " His son Wannalancet care- 
fully followed his advice, and when Philip's War 
broke out, he withdrew his followers to Penacook, 
now Concord in New Hampshire, from the scene of 
the war. On his return afterwards he visited the 
minister of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the his- 
tory of that town, " wished to know whether Chelms- 
ford had suffered much during the war; and being 
informed that it had not, and that God should be 
thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, 'Me next.'" 
Manchester was the residence of John Stark, a hero 



WEDNESDAY. 255 

of two wars, and survivor of a third, and at his death 
the last but one of the American generals of the 
Revolution. He was bom in the adjoining town of 
Londonderry, then Nutfield, in 1728. As early as 
1752, he was taken prisoner by the Indians while 
hunting in the wilderness near Baker's river; he 
performed notable service as a captain of rangers in 
the French war ; commanded a regiment of the New 
Hampshire militia at the battle of Bunker Hill ; and 
fought and won the battle of Bennington in 1777. 
He was past service in the last war, and died here in 
1822, at the age of 94. His monument stands upon 
the second bank of the river, about a mile and a half 
above the falls, and commands a prospect several 
miles up and down the Merrimack. It suggested 
how much more impressive in the landscape is the 
tomb of a hero than the dwellings of the inglorious 
living. Who is most dead, — a hero by whose mon- 
ument you stand, or his descendants of whom you 
have never heard? 

The graves of Passaconaway and Wannalancet are 
marked by no monument on the bank of their native 
river. 

Every town which we passed, if we may believe the 
gazetteer, had been the residence of some great man. 
But though we knocked at many doors, and even 
made particular inquiries, we could not find that there 
were any now living. Under the head of Litchfield 
we read, — | 

"The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life in this 
town." According to another, "He was a classi- 
cal scholar, a good lawyer, a wit, and a poet." We 
saw his old gray house just below Great Nesenkeag 



2S6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Brook. — Under the head of Merrimac, — "Hon. Mat- 
thew Thornton, one of the signers of the Declaration 
of American Independence, resided many years in 
this town." His house too we saw from the river. — 
"Dr. Jonathan Gove, a man distinguished for his 
urbanity, his talents and professional skill, resided 
in this town [Goifstown.] He was one of the old- 
est practitioners of medicine in the county. He was 
many years an active member of the legislature." — 
" Hon. Robert Means, who died Jan. 24, 1823, at 
the age of 80, was for a long period a resident in 
Amherst. He was a native of Ireland. In 1764 he 
came to this country, where by his industry and ap- 
plication to business, he acquired a large property, and 
great respect." — "William Stinson, [one of the first 
settlers of Dunbarton,] born in Ireland, came to Lon- 
donderry with his father. He was much respected 
and was a useful man. James Rogers was from Ire- 
land, and father to Major Robert Rogers. He was 
shot in the woods, being mistaken for a bear." — 
"Rev. Matthew Clark, second minister of London- 
derry, was a native of Ireland, who had in early life 
been an officer in the army, and distinguished himself 
in the defence of the city of Londonderry, when be- 
sieged by the army of King James II., a.d. 1688-9. 
He afterwards relinquished a military life for the 
clerical profession. He possessed a strong mind, 
marked by a considerable degree of eccentricity. He 
died Jan. 25, 1735, and was borne to the grave, at his 
particular request, by his former companions in arms, 
of whom there were a considerable number among 
the early settlers of this town ; several of whom had 
been made free from taxes throughout the British 
dominions by King William, for their bravery in that 



WEDNESDAY. 257 

memorable siege." — Col. George Reid and Capt. 
David M'Clary, 'also citizens of Londonderry, were 
" distinguished and brave " officers. — " Major Andrew 
M'Clary, a native of this town [Epsom] , fell at the 
battle of Breed's Hill." — Many of these heroes, like 
the illustrious Roman, were plowing when the news 
of the massacre at Lexington arrived, and straight- 
way left their plows in the furrow, and repaired to the 
scene of action. Some miles from where we now 
were, there once stood a guide-board which said, " 3 
miles to Squire MacGaw's." — 

But generally speaking, the land is now, at any rate, 
very barren of men, and we doubt if there are as 
many hundreds as we read of. It may be that we 
stood too near. 

Uncannunuc Mountain in Goffstown was visible 
from Amoskeag, five or six miles westward. Its name 
is said to mean "The Two Breasts," there being 
two eminences some distance apart. The highest, 
which is about fourteen hundred feet above the sea, 
probably affords a more extensive view of the Merri- 
mack valley and the adjacent country than any other 
hill, though it is somewhat obstructed by woods. 
Only a few short reaches of the river are visible, but 
you can trace its course far down stream by the sandy 
tracts on its banks. 

A little south of Uncannunuc, about sixty years 
ago, as the story goes, an old woman who went out 
to gather pennyroyal, tript her foot in the bail of a 
small brass kettle in the dead grass and bushes. 
Some say that flints and charcoal and some traces of 
a camp were also found. This kettle, holding about 
four quarts, is still preserved and used to dye thread 



258 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

in. It is supposed to have belonged to some old 
French or Indian hunter, who was killed in one of 
his hunting or scouting excursions, and so never re- 
turned to look after his kettle. 

But we were most interested to hear of the penny- 
royal, it is so soothing to be reminded that wild 
nature produces anything ready for the use of man. 
Men know that soDiethmg is good. One says that it 
is yellow-dock, another that it is bitter-sweet, another 
that it is slippery-elm bark, burdock, catnip, calamint, 
elicampane, thoroughwort, or pennyroyal. A man 
may esteem himself happy when that which is his food 
i.s also his medicine. There is no kind of herb that 
grows, but somebody or other says that it is good. 
I am very glad to hear it. I reminds me of the first 
chapter of Genesis. But how should they know that 
it is good ? That is the mystery to me. I am always 
agreeably disappointed ; it is incredible that they 
should have found it out. Since all things are good, 
men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and 
which the antidote. There are sure to be two pre- 
scriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff" a cold and 
starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two 
practices both always in full blast. Yet you must 
take advice of the one school as if there was no other. 
In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations 
are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civil- 
ized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and 
the physician a Great Medicine. Consider the def- 
erence which is everywhere paid to a doctor's opinion. 
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of man- 
kind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, 
and universally successful. In this case it becomes 
literally true that no imposition is too great for the 



WEDNESDA V. 



259 



credulity of men. Priests and physicians should never 
look one another in the face. They have no common 
ground, nor is their any to mediate between them. 
When the one comes, the other goes. They could 
not come together without laughter, or a significant 
silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the 
other's, and cither's success would be the other's 
failure. It is wonderful that the physician should 
ever die, and that the priest should ever live. Why 
is it that the priest is never called to consult with the 
physician ? It is because men believe practically that 
matter is independent of spirit. But what is quack- 
ery ? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases 
of a man by addressing his body alone. There is 
need of a physician who shall minister to both soul 
and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls 
between two stools. 

After passing through the locks, we had poled our- 
selves through the canal here, about half a mile in 
length, to the boatable part of the river. Above 
Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake reach- 
ing a mile or two without a bend. There were many 
canal boats here bound up to Hooksett, about eight 
miles, and as they were going up empty with a fair 
wmd, one boatman offered to take us in tow if we 
would wait. But when we came alongside, we found 
that they meant to take us on board, since other- 
wise we should clog their motions too much ; but 
as our boat was too heavy to be lifted aboard, we 
pursued our way up the stream, as before, while the 
boatmen were at their dinner, and came to anchor 
at length under some alders on the opposite shore, 
where we could take our lunch. Though far on one 
side, every sound was wafted over to us from the 



260 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

opposite bank, and from the harbor of the canal, and 
we could see everything that passed. By and by 
came several canal boats, at intervals of a quarter 
of a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze, 
and one by one disappeared round a point above. 
With their broad sails set, they moved slowly up the 
stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze, like one- 
winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by some 
mysterious counter current. It was a grand motion, 
so slow and stately, this "standing out," as the 
phrase is, expressing the gradual and steady progress 
of a vessel, as if it were by mere rectitude and dis- 
position, without shuffling. Their sails, which stood 
so still, were like chips cast into the current of the air 
to show which way it set. At length the boat which 
we had spoken came along, keeping the middle of 
the stream, and when within speaking distance the 
steersman called out ironically to say, that if we 
would come alongside now he would take us in tow ; 
but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in the 
shade till we had finished our lunch, and when the 
last boat had disappeared round the point with flap- 
ping sail, for the breeze had now sunk to a zephyr, 
with our own sails set, and plying our oars, we shot 
rapidly up the stream in pursuit, and as we glided 
close alongside, while they were vainly invoking 
^olus to their aid, we returned their compliment 
by proposing, if they would throw us a rope, to " take 
them in tow," to which these Merrimack sailors had 
no suitable answer ready. Thus we gradually over- 
took each boat in succession until we had the river 
to ourselves again. 

Our course this afternoon was between Manchester 
and Gofifstown. 



WEDNESDAY. 26 1 

While we float here, far from that tributary stream 
on whose banks our friends and kindred dwell, our 
thoughts, like the stars, come out of their horizon 
still ; for there circulates a finer blood than Lavoisier 
has discovered the laws of, — the blood, not of kindred 
merely, but of kindness, whose pulse still beats at any 
distance and forever. After years of vain familiarity, 
some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which 
we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than 
the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made 
aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there 
have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were 
of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over 
us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they 
treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired 
to be. There has just reached us, it may be, the 
nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be for- 
gotten, not to be remembered, and we shudder to 
think how it fell on us cold, though in some true but 
tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off these scores. 

In my experience, persons, when they are made the 
subject of conversation, though with a friend, are 
commonly the most prosaic and trivial of facts. The 
universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to dis- 
cuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all 
runs to slander, and our limits grow narrower as we 
advance. How is it that we are impelled to treat our 
old friends so ill when we obtain new ones ? The 
housekeeper says, I never had any new crockery in 
my Hfe but I began to break the old. I say, let us 
speak of mushrooms and forest trees rather. Yet we 
can sometimes afford to remember them in private. — 

Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy, 
Whose features all were cast in Virtues' mould, 



262 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

As one she had designed for Beauty's toy, 

But after manned him for her own stronghold. 

On every side he open was as day, 
That you might see no lack of strength within, 

For walls and ports do only serve alway 
For a pretence to feebleness and sin. 

Say not that Caesar was victorious, 

With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame, 
In other sense this youth was glorious, 

Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came. 

No strength went out to get him victory. 
When all was income of its own accord ; 

For where he went none other was to see, 
But all were parcel of their noble lord. 

He forayed like the subtil haze of summer, 
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes, 

And revolutions works without a murmur, 
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies. 

So was I taken unawares by this, 

I quite forgot my homage to confess ; 
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is, 

I might have loved him had I loved him less. 

Each moment as we nearer drew to each, 
A stern respect withheld us further yet, 

So that we seemed beyond each other's reach, 
And less acquainted than when first we met. 

We two were one while we did sympathize. 
So could we not the simplest bargain drive ; 

And what avails it now that we are wise. 
If absence doth this doubleness contrive? 

Eternity may not the chance repeat, 
But I must tread my single way alone, 

In sad remembrance that we once did meet. 
And know that bliss irrevocably gone. 



WEDNESDA V. 263 

The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing, 

For elegy has other subject none ; 
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring 

Knell of departure from that other one. 

Make haste and celebrate my tragedy ; 

With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields ; 
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me 

Than all the joys other occasion yields. 



Is 't then too late the damage to repair? 

Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft 
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, 

But in my hands the wheat and kernel left. 

If I but love that virtue which he is. 
Though it be scented in the morning air, 

Still shall we be truest acquaintances. 

Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare. 

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, 
and remembered like heat lightning in past summers. 
Fair and flitting like a summer cloud ; — there is always 
some vapor in the air, no matter how long the drought ; 
there are even April showers. Surely from time to 
time, for its vestiges never depart, it floats through 
our atmosphere. It takes place, like vegetation in 
so many materials, because there is such a law, but 
always without permanent form, though ancient and 
familiar as the sun and moon, and as sure to come 
again. The heart is forever inexperienced. They 
silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never 
quite deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy 
clouds in the calmest and clearest days. The Friend 
is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner 
in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be encoun- 
tered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere he may 



264 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

sail before the constant trades. But who would not 
sail through mutiny and storm even over Atlantic 
waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some 
continent man? The imagination still clings to the 
faintest tradition of 

THE ATLANTIDES. 

The smothered streams of love, which flow 

More bright than Phlegethon, more low, 

Island us ever, like the sea, 

In an Atlantic mystery. 

Our fabled shores none ever reach, 

No mariner has found our beach, 

Only our mirage now is seen. 

And neighboring waves with floating green, 

Yet still the oldest charts contain 

Some dotted outline of our main; 

In ancient times midsummer days 

Unto the western islands' gaze. 

To Teneriffe and the Azores, 

Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores. 

But sink not yet, ye desolate isles. 
Anon your coast with commerce smiles, 
And richer freights ye '11 furnish far 
Than Africa or Malabar, 
Be fair, be fertile evermore. 
Ye rumored but untrodden shore. 
Princes and monarchs will contend 
Who first unto your land shall send, 
And pawn the jewels of the crown 
To call your distant soil their own. 

Columbus has sailed westward of these isles by the 
mariner's compass, but neither he nor his successors 
have found them. We are no nearer than Plato was. 
The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this 
New World always haunts the outskirts of his time, 



WEDNESDAY. 265 

and walks through the densest crowd uninterrupted^ 
and as it were in a straight line. — 

Sea and land are but his neighbors, 

And companions in his labors, 

Who on the ocean's verge and firm land's end 

Doth long and truly seek his Friend. 

Many men dwell far inland, 

But he alone sits on the strand. 

Whether he ponders men or books, 

Always still he seaward looks. 

Marine news he ever reads, 

And the slightest glances heeds, 

Feels the sea breeze on his cheek 

At each word the landsmen speak, 

In every companion's eye 

A sailing vessel doth descry ; 

In the ocean's sullen roar 

From some distant port he hears, 

Of wrecks upon a distant shore. 

And the ventures of past years. 

Who does not walk on the plain as amid the col- 
umns of Tadmore of the desert? There is on the 
earth no institution which Friendship has established ; 
it is not taught by any religion ; no scripture contains 
its maxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary col- 
umn. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, 
but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint 
on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments 
of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants. 

However, our fates at least are social. Our courses 
do not diverge ; but as the web of destiny is woven it 
is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. 
Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and 
their actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to lay 
the chief stress on likeness and not on difference, and 



266 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

in foreign bodies we admit that there are many degrees 
of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold above it. 

One or two persons come to my house from time to 
time, there being proposed to them the faint possibility 
of intercourse. They are as full as they are silent, and 
wait for my plectrum to stir the strings of their lyre. 
If they could ever come to the length of a sentence, 
or hear one, on that ground they are dreaming of! 
They speak faintly, and do not obtrude themselves. 
They have heard some news, which none, not even 
they themselves, can impart. It is a wealth they bear 
about them which can be expended in various ways. 
What came they out to seek ? 

No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friend- 
ship, and indeed no thought is more familiar to their 
aspirations. All men are dreaming of it, and its 
drama, which is always a tragedy, is enacted daily. It 
is the secret of the universe. You may thread the 
town, you may wander the country, and none shall 
ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere busy about 
it, and the idea of what is possible in this respect 
affects our behavior toward all new men and women, 
and a great many old ones. Nevertheless, I can 
remember only two or three essays on this subject in 
all literature. No wonder that the Mythology, and 
Arabian Nights, and Shakspeare, and Scott's novels 
entertain us, — we are poets and fablers and dramatists 
and novelists ourselves. We are continually acting a 
part in a more interesting drama than any written. We 
are dreaming that our Friends are onr Friends, and that 
we are our Friends' Friends. Our actual Friends are 
but distant relations of those to whom we are pledged. 
We never exchange more than three words with a 



WEDNESDA Y. 267 

Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts 
and feelings almost habitually rise. One goes forth 
prepared to say " Sweet Friends ! " and the salutation 
is " Damn your eyes ! " But never mind ; faint heart 
never won true Friend. O my Friend, may it come 
to pass, once, that when you are my Friend I may be 
yours. 

Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there 
are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever 
postponed to unimportant duties and relations? 
Friendship is first. Friendship last. But it is equally 
impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them 
answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then 
indeed we begin to keep them company. How often 
we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual 
Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins. 
I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend. 

What is commonly honored with the name of 
Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. 
Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do 
not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the 
verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. 
They are not often transfigured and translated by 
love in each other's presence. I do not observe them 
purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man. 
If one abates a little the price of his wood, or gives 
a neighbor his vote at town-meeeting, or a barrel of 
apples, or lends him his wagon frequently, it is es- 
teemed a rare instance of Friendship. Nor do the 
farmers' wives lead lives consecrated to Friendship. I 
do not see the pair of farmer friends of either sex pre- 
pared to stand against the world. There are only two 
or three couples in history. To say that a man is your 
Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he 



268 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what 
would be the accidental and trifling advantages of 
Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of 
need, by his substance, or his influence, or his coun- 
sel ; but he who foresees such advantages in this rela- 
tion proves himself blind to its real advantage, or 
indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation itself. 
Such services are particular and menial, compared 
with the perpetual and all-embracing service which it 
is. Even the utmost good-will and harmony and 
practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, 
for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some 
say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to 
feed and clothe our bodies, — neighbors are kind 
enough for that, — but to do the like office to our 
spirits. For this few are rich enough, however well 
disposed they may be. 

Think of the importance of Friendship in the edu- 
cation of men. It will make a man honest ; it will 
make him a hero ; it will make him a saint. It is the 
state of the just dealing with the just, the magnani- 
mous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the 
sincere, man with man. — 

" Why love among the virtues is not known, 
Is that love is them all contract in one." 

All the abuses which are the object of reform with 
the philanthropist, the statesman, and the house- 
keeper, are unconsciously amended in the intercourse 
of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays 
us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, 
and who can appreciate them in us. It takes two to 
speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear. 
How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and 



WEDNESDA Y. 269 

stone? If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, 
we should at last forget how to speak truth. In 
our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties 
are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us 
the compliment to expect nobleness from us. We 
ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with 
truly, sincerely, nobly ; but he answers no by his 
deafness. He does not even hear this prayer. He 
says practically, — I will be content if you treat 
me as no better than I should be, as deceitful, mean, 
dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we are 
contented so to deal and to be dealt with, and 
we do not think that for the mass of men there 
is any truer and nobler relation possible. A man 
may have good neighbors, so called, and acquaint- 
ances, and even companions, wife, parents, brothers, 
sisters, children, who meet himself and one another 
on this ground only. The State does not demand 
justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds 
very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than 
rogues practise ; and so do the family and the neigh- 
borhood. What is commonly called Friendship even 
is only a little more honor among rogues. 

But sometimes we are said to love another, that is 
to stand in a true relation to him, so that we give the 
best to, and receive the best from, him. Between 
whom there is hearty truth there is love ; and in pro- 
portion to our truthfulness and confidence in one 
another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and 
answer to our ideal. There are passages of affection 
in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such 
as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which tran- 
scend our earthly life, and anticipate heaven for us. 
What is this Love that may come right into the middle 



2yO A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

of a prosaic Goflfstown day, equal to any of the gods ? 
that discovers a new world, fair and fresh and eternal, 
occupying the place of this old one, when to the com- 
mon eye a dust has settled on the universe? which 
world cannot else be reached, and does not exist. 
What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable 
and worthy to be repeated than those which love has 
inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. 
They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of 
music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated 
by the memory. All other words crumble off with 
the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not 
dare to repeat them now aloud. We are not compe- 
tent to hear them at all times. 

The books for young people say a great deal about 
the selection of Friends ; it is because they really 
have nothing to say about Friends. They mean 
associates and confidants merely. "Know that the 
contrariety of foe and Friend proceeds from God." 
Friendship takes place between those who have an 
affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and 
inevitable result. No professions nor advances will 
avail. Even speech, at first, necessarily has nothing 
to do with it ; but it follows after silence, as the buds 
in the graft do not put forth into leaves till long 
after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the 
parties have no part to act. We are all Mussul- 
mans and fatalists in this respect. Impatient and 
uncertain lovers think that they must say or do some- 
thing kind whenever they meet ; they must never be 
cold. But they who are Friends do not do what 
they think they must, but what they 7mist. Even their 
Friendship is in one sense but a sublime phenome- 
non to them. 



WEDNESDAY, 27 1 

The true and not despairing Friend will address his 
Friend in some such terms as these. 

^' I never asked thy leave to let me love thee, — I 
have a right. I love thee not as something private 
and personal, which is your own, but as something 
universal and worthy of love, which I have found. 
O how I think of you! You are purely good, — you 
are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did 
not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an 
opportunity to live." 

" You are the fact in a fiction, — you are the truth 
more strange and admirable than fiction. Consent 
only to be what you are. I alone will never stand in 
your way." 

" This is what I would like, — to be as intimate 
with you as our spirits are intimate, — respecting you 
as I respect my ideal. Never to profane one another 
by word or action, even by a thought. Between us, 
if necessary, let there be no acquaintance." 

" I have discovered you ; how can you be concealed 
from me ? " 

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will 
religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his 
apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. 
They are kind to each other's dreams. 

Though the poet says, " 'T is the preeminence of 
Friendship to impute excellence," yet we can never 
praise our Friend, nor esteem him praiseworthy, nor 
let him think that he can please us by any behavior, 
or ever treat us well enough. That kindness which 
has so good a reputation elsewhere can least of all 
consist with this relation, and no such affront can be 



2^2 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

offered to a Friend, as a conscious good-will, a friend- 
liness which is not a necessity of the Friend's nature. 

The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to 
one another, by constant constitutional differences, 
and are most commonly and surely the complements 
of one another. How natural and easy it is for man 
to secure the attention of woman to what interests 
himself Men and women of equal culture, thrown 
together, are sure to be of a certain value to one 
another, more than men to men. There exists already 
a natural disinterestedness and liberality in such 
society, and I think that any man will more confi- 
dently carry his favorite books to read to some circle 
of intelligent women, than to one of his own sex. 
The visit of man to man is wont to be an interruption, 
but the sexes naturally expect one another. Yet 
Friendship is no respecter of sex ; and perhaps it is 
more rare between the sexes, than between two of the 
same sex. 

Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect 
equality. It cannot well spare any outward sign of 
equal obligation and advantage. The nobleman can 
never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the king 
among his subjects. Not that the parties to it are in 
all respects equal, but they are equal in all that respects 
or affects their Friendship. The one's love is exactly 
balanced and represented by the other's. Persons are 
only the vessels which contain the nectar, and the hy- 
drostatic paradox is the symbol of love's law. It finds 
its level and rises to its fountain-head in all breasts, 
and its slenderest column balances the ocean. — 



Love equals swift and slow, 
And high and low, 



WEDNESDAY. 2/3 

Racer and lame, 

The hunter and his game. 

The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than 
the other. A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's. 

Confucius said, " Never contract Friendship with a 
man that is not better than thyself." It is the merit 
and preservation of Friendship, that it takes place on 
a level higher than the actual characters of the parties 
would seem to warrant. The ra3^s of light come to 
us in such a curve that every man whom we meet 
appears to be taller than he actually is. Such founda- 
tion has civility. My Friend is that one whom I can 
associate with my choicest thought. I always assign 
to him a nobler employment in my absence than I 
ever find him engaged in ; and I imagine that the 
hours which he devotes to me were snatched from a 
higher society. The sorest insult which I ever re- 
ceived from a Friend was, when he behaved with the 
license which only long and cheap acquaintance allows 
to one's faults, in my presence, without shame, and 
still addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, lest 
thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of thine, 
and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy 
love. 

Friendship is never established as an understood 
relation. Do you demand that I be less your Friend 
that you may know it? Yet what right have I to 
think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for 
me? It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. 
It is an exercise of the purest imagination and the 
rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent be- 
havior, — "I will be so related to thee as thou canst 
imagine; even so thou mayest believe. I will spend 
truth, — all my wealth on thee," — and the Friend 



2/4 ^ Vi^EEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

responds silently through his nature and life, and 
treats his Friend with the same divine courtesy. He 
knows us literally through thick and thin. He never 
asks for a sign of love, but can distinguish it by the 
features which it naturally wears. We never need to 
stand upon ceremony with him with regard to his 
visits. Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that 
I am glad to see thee when thou comest. It would 
be paying too dear for thy visit to ask for it. Where 
my Friend lives there are all riches and every attrac- 
tion, and no slight obstacle can keep me from him. 
Let me never have to tell thee what I have not to tell. 
Let our intercourse be wholly above ourselves, and draw 
us up to it. The language of Friendship is not words 
but meanings. It is an intelligence above language. 
One imagines endless conversations with his Friend, 
in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts 
be spoken without hesitancy, or end ; but the experi- 
ence is commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances may 
come and go, and have a word ready for every occa- 
sion ; but what puny word shall he utter whose very 
breath is thought and meaning ? Suppose you go to 
bid farewell to your Friend who is setting out on a 
journey ; what other outward sign do you know of 
than to shake his hand ? Have you any palaver ready 
for him then ? any box of salve to commit to his pocket ? 
any particular message to send by him .'* any state- 
ment which you had forgotten to make ? — as if you 
could forget anything. — No, it is much that you take 
his hand and say Farewell ; that you could easily 
omit ; so far custom has prevailed. It is even pain- 
ful, if he is to go, that he should linger so long. If he 
must go, let him go quickly. Have you any last words ? 
Alas, it is only the word of words, which you have so 



WEDNESDAY. 2/5 

long sought and found not ; you have not 2. first word 
yet. There are few even whom I should venture to call 
earnestly by their most proper names. A name pro- 
nounced is the recognition of the individual to whom 
it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, 
he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. 

The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as 
that of hate. When it is durable it is serene and 
equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the 
ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would 
fain be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for Friend- 
ship that he is able to do without that which is cheap 
and passionate. A true Friendship is as wise as it 
is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the 
guidance of their love, and know no other law nor 
kindness. It is not extravagant and insane, but what 
it says is something established henceforth, and will 
bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is better 
and fairer news, and no time will ever shame it, or 
prove it false. This is a plant which thrives best in 
a temperate zone, where summer and winter alternate 
with one another. The Friend is a necessarhcs, and 
meets his Friend on homely ground ; not on carpets 
and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they 
will sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws. They 
will meet without any outcry, and part without loud 
sorrow. Their relation implies such qualities as the 
warrior prizes ; for it takes a valor to open the hearts 
of men as well as the gates of cities. 

The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry 
the fur-trader, as described in the latter's "Adven- 
tures," so almost bare and leafless, yet not blossom- 
less nor fruitless, is remembered with satisfaction and 
security. The stern imperturbable warrior, after fast- 



276 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

ing, solitude, and mortification of body, comes to the 
white man's lodge, and affirms that he is the white 
brother whom he saw in his dream, and adopts him 
henceforth. He buries the hatchet as it regards his 
friend, and they hunt and feast and make maple-sugar 
together. " Metals unite from fluxility ; birds and 
beasts from motives of convenience ; fools from fear 
and stupidity; and just men at sight.''. If Wawatam 
would taste the " white man's milk " with his tribe, or 
take his bowl of human broth made of the trader's 
fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place of safety for 
his Friend, whom he has rescued from a similar fate. 
At length, after a long winter of undisturbed and happy 
intercourse in the family of the chieftain in the wilder- 
ness, hunting and fishing, they return in the spring to 
Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs ; and it be- 
comes necessary for Wawatam to take leave of his 
Friend at the Isle aux Outardes, when the latter, to 
avoid his enemies, proceeded to the Sault de Sainte 
Marie, supposing that they were to be separated for 
a short time only. "We now exchanged farewells," 
says Henry, "with an emotion entirely reciprocal. I 
did not quit the lodge without the most grateful sense 
of the many acts of goodness which I had experienced 
in it, nor without the sincerest respect for the virtues 
which I had witnessed among its members. All the 
family accompanied me to the beach ; and the canoe 
had no sooner put off than Wawatam commenced an 
address to the Kichi Manito, beseeching him to take 
care of me, his brother, till we should next meet. — 
We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow of 
our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had ceased 
to offer up his prayers." We never hear of him 
again. 



WEDNESDA Y. 



277 



Friendship is not so kind as is imagined ; it has 
not much human blood in it, but consists with a cer- 
tain disregard for men and their erections, the Chris- 
tian duties and humanities, while it purifies the air 
like electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy 
in the relation of two more than usually innocent and 
true to their highest instincts. We may call it an 
essentially heathenish intercourse, free and irrespon- 
sible in its nature, and practising all the virtues gra- 
tuitously. It is not the highest sympathy merely, but 
a pure and lofty society, a fragmentary and godlike 
intercourse of ancient date, still kept up at intervals, 
which, remembering itself, does not hesitate to dis- 
regard the humbler rights and duties of humanity. 
It requires immaculate and godlike qualities full- 
grown, and exists at all only by condescension and 
anticipation of the remotest future. We love noth- 
ing which is merely good and not fair, if such a thing 
is possible. Nature puts some kind of blossom before 
every fruit, not simply a calyx behind it. When the 
Friend comes out of his heathenism and superstition, 
and breaks his idols, being converted by the precepts 
of a newer testament ; when he forgets his mythology, 
and treats his Friend like a Christian, or as he can 
afford ; then Friendship ceases to be Friendship, and 
becomes charity ; that principle which established the 
almshouse is now beginning with its charity at home, 
and establishing an almshouse and pauper relations 
there. 

As for the number which this society admits, it is 
at any rate to be begun with one, the noblest and 
greatest that we know, and whether the world will 
ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms, 



27^ A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

" There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair," 

remains to be proved ; — 

" And certaine he is well begone 
Among a thousand that findeth one." 

We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any while 
we are conscious that another is more deserving of 
our love. Yet Friendship does not stand for num- 
bers ; the Friend does not count his Friends on his 
fingers; they are not numerable. The more there 
are included by this bond, if they are indeed included, 
the rarer and diviner the quality of the love that binds 
them. I am ready to believe that as private and inti- 
mate a relation may exist by which three are embraced, 
as between two. Indeed we cannot have too many 
friends ; the virtue which we appreciate we to some 
extent appropriate, so that thus we are made at last 
more fit for every relation of life. A base Friendship 
is of a narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble 
one is not exclusive ; its very superfluity and dispersed 
love is the humanity which sweetens society, and sym- 
pathizes with foreign nations ; for though its founda- 
tions are private, it is in effect, a public affair and a 
public advantage, and the Friend, more than the 
father of a family, deserves well of the state. 

The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. 
It is a delicate plant though a native. The least un- 
worthiness, even if it be unknown to one's self, vitiates 
it. Let the Friend know that those faults which he 
observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There 
is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for 
our suspicions by finding what we suspected. By 



WEDNESDAY. 279 

our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have 
so much and such of you, my Friend, no more. 
Perhaps there are none charitable, none disinterested, 
none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true and 
lasting Friendship. 

I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I 
do not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them 
whether I do or not. As if they expected a vote of 
thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or did. 
Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be 
that your silence was the finest thing of the two. 
There are some things which a man never speaks of, 
which are much finer kept silent about. To the high- 
est communications we only lend a silent ear. Our 
finest relations are not simply kept silent about, but 
buried under a positive depth of silence, never to be 
revealed. It may be that we are not even yet ac- 
quainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, 
not when there is misunderstanding about words, but 
when silence is not understood. Then there can 
never be an explanation. What avails it that another 
loves you, if he does not understand you ? Such love 
is a curse. What sort of companions are they who 
are presuming always that their silence is more expres- 
sive than yours ? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and 
unjust, to conduct as if you were the only party ag- 
grieved! Has not your Friend always equal ground 
of complaint ? No doubt my Friends sometimes speak 
to me in vain, but they do not know what things I 
hear which they are not aware that they have spoken. 
I know that I have frequently disappointed them by 
not giving them words when they expected them, or 
such as they expected. Whenever I see my Friend I 
speak to him, but the expector, the man with the ears, 



2S0 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

is not he. They will complain too that you are hard. 
O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side out- 
wards, when next I weep I will let you know. They 
ask for words and deeds, when a true relation is word 
and deed. If they know not of these things, how can 
they be informed? We often forbear to confess our 
feelings, not from pride, but for fear that we could not 
continue to love the one who required us to give such 
proof of our affection. 

I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelli- 
gent mind, interested in her own culture, and earnest 
to enjoy the highest possible advantages, and I meet 
her with pleasure as a natural person who not a little 
provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated in turn 
by myself. Yet our acquaintance plainly does not 
attain to that degree of confidence and sentiment 
which women, which all, in fact, covet. I am glad to 
help her, as I am helped by her ; I like very well to 
know her with a sort of stranger's privilege, and hesi- 
tate to visit her often, like her other Friends. My 
nature pauses here, I do not well know why. Per- 
haps she does not make the highest demand on me, 
a religious demand. Some, with whose prejudices or 
peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet inspire me with 
confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as 
a religious heathen at least, — a good Greek. I too 
have principles as well founded as their own. If this 
person could conceive that, without wilfulness, I asso- 
ciate with her as far as our destinies are coincident, as 
far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such 
intercourse, it would be a grateful assurance to me. I 
feel as if I appeared careless, indifferent, and without 
principle to her, not expecting more, and yet not con- 
tent with less. If she could know that I make an 



WEDNESDA Y. 28 1 

infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she 
would see that this true though incomplete intercourse, 
is infinitely better than a more unreserved but falsely 
grounded one, without the principle of growth in it. 
For a companion, I require one who will make an 
equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a 
one will always be rightly tolerant. It is suicide and 
corrupts good manners to welcome any less than this. 
I value and trust those who love and praise my aspira- 
tion rather than my performance. If you would not 
stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking and 
further, then my education could not dispense with 
your company. 

My love must be as free 

As is the eagle's wing, 
Hovering o'er land and sea 

And everything. 

I must not dim my eye 

In thy saloon, 
I must not leave my sky 

And nightly moon. 

Be not the fowler's net 

Which stays my flight, 
And craftily is set 

T' allure the sight. 

But be the favoring gale 

That bears me on. 
And still doth fill my sail 

When thou art gone. 

I cannot leave my sky 

For thy caprice, 
True love would soar as high 

As heaven is. 



282 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

The eagle would not brook 

Her mate thus won, 
Who trained his eye to look 

Beneath the sun. 

Nothing is so difficult as to help a Friend in matters 
which do not require the aid of Friendship, but only 
a cheap and trivial service, if your Friendship wants 
the basis of a thorough practical acquaintance. I 
stand in the friendliest relation, on social and spiritual 
grounds, to one who does not perceive what practical 
skill I have, but when he seeks my assistance in such 
matters, is wholly ignorant of that one whom he deals 
with ; does not use my skill, which in such matters is 
much greater than his, but only my hands. I know 
another, who, on the contrary, is remarkable for his 
discrimination in this respect ; who knows how to 
make use of the talents of others when he does not 
possess the same ; knows when not to look after or 
oversee, and stops short at his man. It is a rare 
pleasure to serve him, which all laborers know. I am 
not a little pained by the other kind of treatment. It 
is as if, after the friendliest and most ennobling inter- 
course, your Friend should use you as a hammer and 
drive a nail with your head, all in good faith ; not- 
withstanding that you are a tolerable carpenter, as 
well as his good Friend, and would use a hammer 
cheerfully in his service. This want of perception is 
a defect which all the virtues of the heart cannot 
supply. — 

The Good how can we trust ? 
Only the Wise are just. 
The Good we use, 
The Wise we cannot choose. 
These there are none above : 



WEDNESDAY. 283 

The Good they know and love, 
But are not known again 
By those of lesser ken. 
They do not charm us with their eyes, 
But they transfix with their advice ; 
No partial sympathy they feel 
With private woe or private weal. 
But with the universe joy and sigh, 
Whose knowledge is their sympathy. 

Confucius said, " To contract ties of Friendship 
with any one, is to contract Friendship with his 
virtue. There ought not to be any other motive in 
Friendship." But men wish us to contract Friend- 
ship with their vice also. I have a Friend who wishes 
me to see that to be right which I know to be wrong. 
But if Friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if it is to 
darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be 
expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. 
True Friendship can afford true knowledge. It does 
not depend on darkness and ignorance. A want of 
discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can 
see my Friend's virtues more distinctly than another's, 
his faults too are made more conspicuous by contrast. 
We have not so good a right to hate any as our 
Friend. Faults are not the less faults because they 
are invariably balanced by corresponding virtues, and 
for a fault there is no excuse, though it may appear 
greater than it is in many ways. I have never known 
one who could bear criticism, who could not be flat- 
tered, who would not bribe his judge, or was content 
that the truth should be loved always better than him- 
self. 

If two travellers would go their way harmoniously 
together, the one must take as true and just a view of 
things as the other, else their path will not be strewn 



284 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

with roses. Yet you can travel profitably and pleas- 
antly even with a blind man, if he practises common 
courtesy, and when you converse about the scenery 
will remember that he is blind but that you can see ; 
and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is 
probably quickened by his want of sight. Otherwise 
you will not long keep company. A blind man, and 
a man in whose eyes there was no defect, were walk- 
ing together, when they came to the edge of a preci- 
pice, — " Take care ! my friend," said the latter, '' here 
is a steep precipice ; go no further this way." — "I 
know better," said the other, and stepped off. 

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to 
our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever 
sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well 
grounded to be uttered. There is not so good an 
understanding between any two, but the exposure by 
the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a 
misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness. 
The constitutional differences which always exist, and 
are obstacles to a perfect Friendship, are forever a 
forbidden theme to the lips of Friends. They advise 
by their whole behavior. Nothing can reconcile them 
but love. They are fatally late when they undertake 
to explain and treat with one another like foes. Who 
will take an apology for a Friend? They must apol- 
ogize like dew and frost, which are off again with the 
sun, and which all men know in their hearts to be 
beneficent. The necessity itself for explanation, — 
what explanation will atone for that ? True love does 
not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mu- 
tual acquaintances can explain away, but alas, how- 
ever slight the apparent cause, only for adequate and 
fatal and everlasting reasons, which can never be set 



WEDNESDAY. 285 

aside. Its quarrel, if there is any, is ever recurring, 
notwithstanding the beams of affection which invari- 
ably come to gild its tears ; as the rainbow, however 
beautiful and unerring a sign, does not promise fair 
weather forever, but only for a season. I have known 
two or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never 
known advice to be of use but in trivial and transient 
matters. One may know what another does not, but 
the utmost kindness cannot impart what is requisite 
to make the advice useful. We must accept or re- 
fuse one another as we are. I could tame a hyena 
more easily than my Friend. He is a material which 
no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell 
an oak with a fire-brand, and wear a hatchet out of 
the rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest 
chip out of the character of my Friend, either to 
beautify or deform it. 

The lover learns at last that there is no person 
quite transparent and trustworthy, but every one has 
a devil in him that is capable of any crime in the long 
run. Yet, as an oriental philosopher has said, "Al- 
though Friendship between good men is interrupted, 
their principles remain unaltered. The stalk of 
the lotus may be broken, and the fibres remain 
connected." 

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than 
wisdom and skill without. There may be courtesy, 
there may be even temper, and wit, and talent, and 
sparkling conversation, there may be good-will even, 
— and yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine 
for exercise. Our life without love is like coke and 
ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and Parian 
marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, 



286 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and yet if there is no milk mingled with the wine at 
their entertainments, better is the hospitality of Goths 
and Vandals. My Friend is not of some other race 
or family of men, but flesh of my flesh, bone of my 
bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature grop- 
ing yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart. 
Have not the fates associated us in many ways? Is 
it of no significance that we have so long partaken of 
the same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed 
the same air, summer and winter, felt the same heat 
and cold ; that the same fruits have been pleased to 
refresh us both, and we have never had a thought of 
different fibre the one from the other! 

Nature doth have her dawn each day, 

But mine are far between ; 
Content, I cry, for sooth to say> 

Mine brightest are I ween. 

For when my sun doth deign to rise, 

Though it be her noontide, 
Her fairest field in shadow Ues, 

Nor can my light abide. 

Sometimes I bask me in her day, 

Conversing with my mate, 
But if we interchange one ray. 

Forthwith her heats abate. 

Through his discourse I climb and see, 

As from some eastern hill, 
A brighter morrow rise to me 

Than lieth in her skill. 

As 'twere two summer days in one. 

Two Sundays come together, 
Our rays united make one sun. 

With fairest summer weather. 



WEDNESDA Y. 287 

As surely as the sunset in my latest November 
shall translate me to the ethereal world, and remind me 
of the ruddy morning of youth ; as surely as the last 
strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall 
make age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold 
influences of nature survive during the term of our 
natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever be my 
Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time 
shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friend- 
ship, no less than the ruins of temples. As I love 
nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, 
and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and 
summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend. 

But all that can be said of Friendship, is like bot- 
any to flowers. How can the understanding take 
account of its friendliness 'i 

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much 
as their lives. They will leave consolation to the 
mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the ex- 
penses of their funerals, and their memories will be 
incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as 
their monuments are overgrown with moss. 

This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends. 

Also this other word of entreaty and advice to the 
large and respectable nation of Acquaintances, beyond 
the mountains ; — Greeting, 

My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let us 
see that we have the whole advantage of each other ; 
we will be useful, at least, if not admirable, to one 
another. I know that the mountains which separate 
us are high, and covered with perpetual snow, but 
despair not. Improve the serene winter weather to 



288 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

scale them. If need be, soften the rocks with vine- 
gar. For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready to 
receive you. Nor shall I be slow on my side to pene- 
trate to your Provence. Strike then boldly at head 
or heart or any vital part. Depend upon it the 
timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear 
rough usage ; and if it should crack, there is plenty 
more where it came from. I am no piece of crockery 
that cannot be jostled against my neighbor without 
danger of being broken by the collision, and must 
needs ring false and jarringly to the end of my days, 
when once I am cracked ; but rather one of the old 
fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands 
at the head of the table, and at another is a milking- 
stool, and at another a seat for children, and finally 
goes down to its grave not unadorned with honorable 
scars, and does not die till it is worn out. Nothing 
can shock a brave man but dulness. Think how 
many rebuffs every man has experienced in his day ; 
perhaps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten fresh- 
water clams, or worn one shirt for a week without 
washing. Indeed, you cannot receive a shock unless 
you have an electric affinity for that which shocks 
you. Use me, then, for I am useful in my way, and 
stand as one of many petitioners, from toadstool and 
henbane up to dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put 
to my use, if by any means ye may find me service- 
able ; whether for a medicated drink or bath, as balm 
and lavender ; or for fragrance, as verbena and gera- 
nium ; or for sight, as cactus ; or for thoughts, as 
pansy. — These humbler, at least, if not those higher 
uses. 

Ah my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would not 
forget you. I can well afford to welcome you. Let 



WEDNESDA Y. 289 

me subscribe myself Yours ever and truly — your 
much obliged servant. We have nothing to fear from 
our foes ; God keeps a standing army for that service ; 
but we have no ally against our Friends, those ruth- 
less Vandals. 



Once more to one and all, 

" Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers. 

Let such pure hate still underprop 
Our love, that we may be 
Each other's conscience, 
And have our sympathy 
Mainly from thence. 

We '11 one another treat like gods, 
And all the faith we have 
In virtue and in truth, bestow 
On either, and suspicion leave 
To gods below. 

Two solitary stars — 
Unmeasured systems far 
Between us roll, 

But by our conscious light we are 
Determined to one pole. 

What need confound the sphere — ■ 

Love can afford to wait. 

For it no hour 's too late 

That witnesseth one duty's end. 

Or to another doth beginning lend. 

It will subserve no use. 
More than the tints of flowers, 
Only the independent guest 
Frequents its bowers, 
Inherits its bequest. 



290 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

No speech though kind has it, 
But kinder silence doles 
Unto its mates, 
By night consoles, 
By day congratulates. 

What saith the tongue to tongue ? 
What heareth ear of ear ? 
By the decrees of fate 
From year to year. 
Does it communicate. 

Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns — 
No trivial bridge of words, 
Or arch of boldest span, 
Can leap the moat that girds 
The sincere man. 

No show of bolts and bars 
Can keep the foeman out, 
Or 'scape his secret mine 
Who entered with the doubt 
That drew the line. 

No warder at the gate 
Can let the friendly in, 
But, like the sun, o'er all 
He will the castle win. 
And shine along the wall. 

There "s nothing in the world I know 
That can escape from love. 
For every depth it goes below. 
And every height above. 

It waits as waits the sky, 
Until the clouds go by. 
Yet shines serenely on 
With an eternal day, 



WEDNESDAY. 29 1 

Alike when they are gone, 
And when they stay. 

Implacable is Love, — 
Foes may be bought or teazed 
From their hostile intent. 
But he goes unappeased 
Who is on kindness bent. 

Having rowed five or six miles above Amoskeag 
before sunset, and reached a pleasant part of the river, 
one of us landed to look for a farm-house, where we 
might replenish our stores, while the other remained 
cruising about the stream, and exploring the opposite 
shores to find a suitable harbor for the night. In the 
mean while the canal boats began to come round a 
point in our rear, poling their way along close to the 
shore, the breeze having quite died away. This time 
there was no offer of assistance, but one of the boat- 
men only called out to say, as the truest revenge for 
having been the losers in the race, that he had seen 
a wood-duck, which we had scared up, sitting on a 
tall white-pine, half a mile down stream ; and he re- 
peated the assertion several times, and seemed really 
chagrined at the apparent suspicion with which this 
information was received. But there sat the summer 
duck still undisturbed by us. 

By and by the other voyageur returned from his 
inland expedition, bringing one of the natives with 
him, a little flaxen-headed boy, with some tradition, 
or small edition, of Robinson Crusoe in his head, who 
had been charmed by the account of our adventures, 
and asked his father's leave to join us. He exam- 
ined, at first from the top of the bank, our boat and 
furniture, with sparkling eyes, and wished himself 
already his own man. He was a lively and interest- 



292 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

ing boy, and we should have been glad to ship him ; 
but Nathan was still his father's boy, and had not 
come to years of discretion. 

We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk 
and water-melons for dessert. For this farmer, a 
clever and well-disposed man, cultivated a large patch 
of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. 
He hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting 
his hop-fields and kiln and melon patch, warning us 
to step over the tight rope which surrounded the lat- 
ter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a 
little bower at the corner, where it connected with the 
lock of a gun ranging with the line, and where, as he 
informed us, he sometimes sat in pleasant nights to 
defend his premises against thieves. We stepped 
high over the line, and sympathized with our host's 
on the whole quite human, if not humane, interest 
in the success of his experiment. That night espe- 
cially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the 
atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was 
a Methodist man, who had his dwelling between the 
river and Uncannunuc Mountain ; who there belonged, 
and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement 
of distant political organizations, and by his own 
tenacity, held a property in his melons, and contin- 
ued to plant. We suggested melon seeds of new 
varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to 
his stock. We had come away up here among the 
hills to learn the impartial and unbribable beneficence 
of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well in 
one man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges 
as kindly under his hill-side, — when we had imag- 
ined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and 
faithful souls whom we know. 



WEDNESDA Y. 293 

We found a convenient harbor for our boat on the 
opposite or east shore, still in Hooksett, at the mouth 
of a small brook which emptied into the Merrimack, 
where it would be out of the way of any passing boat 
in the night, — for they commonly hug the shore if 
bound up stream, either to avoid the current, or touch 
the bottom with their poles, — and where it would be 
accessible without stepping on the clayey shore. We 
set one of our largest melons to cool in the still water 
among the alders at the mouth of this creek, but when 
our tent was pitched and ready, and we went to get 
it, it had floated out into the stream and was nowhere 
to be seen. So taking the boat in the twilight, we 
went in pursuit of this property, and at length, after 
long straining of the eyes, its green disk was discov- 
ered far down the river, gently floating seaward with 
many twigs and leaves from the mountains that even- 
ing, and so perfectly balanced that it had not keeled 
at all, and no water had run in at the tap which had 
been taken out to hasten its cooling. 

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the clear 
light of the western sky fell on the eastern trees and 
was reflected in the water, and we enjoyed so serene 
an evening as left nothing to describe. For the 
most part we think that there are few degrees of sub- 
limity, and that the highest is but little higher than 
that which we now behold; but we are always de- 
ceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale 
and fade away. We are grateful when we are re- 
minded by interior evidence, of the permanence of 
universal laws ; for our faith is but faintly remem- 
bered, indeed, is not a remembered assurance, but 
a use and enjoyment of knowledge. It is when we 
do not have to believe, but come into actual contact 



294 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

with Truth, and are related to her in the most direct 
and intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over 
us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the 
fields in cloudy weather. In some happier moment, 
when more sap flows in the withered stalk of our 
life,- Syria and India stretch away from our present 
as they do in history. All the events which make 
the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our 
private experiences. Suddenly and silently the eras 
which we call history awake and glimmer in us, and 
there is room for Alexander and Hannibal to march 
and conquer. In other words, the history which we 
read is only a fainter memory of events which have 
happened in our own experience. Tradition is a 
more interrupted and feebler memory. 

This world is but canvass to our imaginations. I 
see men with infinite pains endeavoring to realize 
to their bodies, what I, with at least equal pains, 
would realize to my imagination, — its capacities ; 
for certainly there is a life of the mind above the 
wants of the body and independent of it. Often 
the body is warmed, but the imagination is torpid ; 
the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and 
shrunk. But what avails all other wealth if this is 
wanting ? " Imagination is the air of mind," in 
which it lives and breathes. All things are as I am. 
Where is the House of Change ? The past is only 
so heroic as we see it. It is the canvass on which 
our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, 
the dim prospectus of our future field. Our circum- 
stances answer to our expectations and the demand 
of our natures. I have noticed that if a man thinks 
that he needs a thousand dollars, and cannot be 
convinced that he does not, he will commonly be 



WEDNESDA Y. 295 

found to have them^ if he lives and thinks a thou- 
sand dollars will be forthcoming, though it be to 
buy shoe strings with. A thousand mills will be 
just as slow to come to one who finds it equally 
hard to convince himself that he needs i/iem. 

Men are by birth equal in this, that given 
Themselves and their condition, they are even. 

I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and 
endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is 
zs, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for any- 
thing else to be ; that we walk on in our particular 
paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, 
merely because we must walk in some path ; that 
every man can get a living, and so few can do any 
more. So much only can I accomplish ere health 
and strength are gone, and yet this suffices. The 
bird now sits just out of gunshot. I am never rich 
in money, and I am never meanly poor. If debts 
are incurred, why, debts are in the course of events 
cancelled, as it were by the same law by which 
they were incurred. I heard that an engagement 
was entered into between a certain youth and a 
maiden, and then I heard that it was broken off, but 
I did not know the reason in either case. We are 
hedged about, we think, by accident and circum- 
stance, now we creep as in a dream, and now again 
we run, as if there were a fate in it and all things 
thwarted or assisted. I cannot change my clothes 
but when I do, and yet I do change them, and soil 
the new ones. It is wonderful that this gets done, 
when some admirable deeds which I could men- 
tion, do not get done. Our particular lives seem 
of such fortune and confident strength and durability 



296 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

as piers of solid rock thrown forward into the tide 
of circumstance. When every other path would fail, 
with singular and unerring confidence we advance 
on our particular course. What risks we run ! famine 
and fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of 
a cruel fate, — and yet every man lives till he — 
dies. How did he manage that? Is there no im- 
mediate danger ? We wonder superfluously when we 
hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely, — 
we have walked a plank all our lives up to this par- 
ticular string-piece where we are. My life will wait 
for nobody, but is being matured still without delay, 
while I go about the streets and chaffer with this 
man and that to secure a living. It is as indifferent 
and easy meanwhile as a poor man's dog, and making 
acquaintance with its kind. It will cut its own 
channel like a mountain stream, and by the longest 
ridge is not kept from the sea at last. I have found 
all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, 
elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my 
resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my 
career ; I am permitted to be rash. Gulfs are bridged 
in a twinkling, as if some unseen baggage train 
carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from 
the heights I scan the tempting but unexplored 
Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being carried 
over the mountains piece-meal on the backs of 
mules and llamas, whose keel shall plow its waves 
and bear me to the Indies. Day would not dawn 
if it were not for 

THE INWARD MORNING. 

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes 
Which outward nature wears, 



WEDNESDA Y. 297 

And in its fashion's hourly change 
It all things else repairs. 

In vain I look for change abroad, 

And can no difference find, 
Till some new ray of peace uncalled 

Illumes my inmost mind. 

What is it gilds the trees and clouds, 

And paints the heavens so gay, 
But yonder fast abiding light 

With its unchanging ray ? 

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, 

Upon a winter's morn. 
Where'er his silent beams intrude 

The murky night is gone. 

How could the patient pine have known 

The morning breeze would come, 
Or humble flowers anticipate 

The insect's noonday hum, — 

Till the new light with morning cheer 

From far streamed through the aisles, 
And nimbly told the forest trees 

For many stretching miles ? 

I 've heard within my inmost soul 

Such cheerful morning news, 
In the horizon of my mind 

Have seen such orient hues, 



As in the twilight of the dawn, 
When the first birds awake, 

Are heard within some silent wood, 
Where they the small twigs break. 



298 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Or in the eastern skies are seen, 

Before the sun appears, 
The harbingers of summer heats 

Which from afar he bears. 

Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide 
away in thin volumes like mist and smoke, till at 
length, some warm morning, perchance, I see a 
sheet of mist blown down the brook to the swamp, 
and I float as high above the fields with it. I can 
recall to mind the stillest summer hours, in which 
the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there 
is a valor in that time the bare memory of which 
is armor that can laugh at any blow of fortune. 
For our lifetime the strains of a harp are heard to 
swell and die alternately, and death is but "the 
pause when the blast is recollecting itself." 

We lay awake a long while, listening to the mur- 
murs of the brook, in the angle formed by whose 
bank with the river our tent was pitched, and there 
was a sort of human interest in its story, which ceases 
not in freshet or in drought the livelong summer, 
and the profounder lapse of the river was quite 
drowned by its din. But the rill, whose 

" Silver sands and pebbles sing 
Eternal ditties with the spring," 

is silenced by the first frosts of winter, while mightier 
streams, on whose bottom the sun never shines, 
clogged with sunken rocks and the ruins of forests, 
from whose surface comes up no murmur, are 
strangers to the icy fetters which bind fast a thou- 
sand contributary rills. 

I dreamed this night of an event which had 



WEDNESDA V. 299 

occurred long before. It was a difference with a 
Friend, which had not ceased to give me pain, 
though I had no cause to blame myself. But in 
my dream ideal justice was at length done me for 
his suspicions, and I received that compensation 
which I had never obtained in my waking hours. 
I was unspeakably soothed and rejoiced, even after 
I awoke, because in dreams we never deceive our- 
selves, nor are deceived, and this seemed to have 
the authority of a final judgment. 

We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are 
divine, as well as some waking thoughts. Donne 
sings of one 

" Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray." 

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We 
are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some 
unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it 
had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which 
is our atonement, measures inversely the degree by 
which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. 
For in dreams we but act a part which must have 
been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, 
and no doubt could discover some waking consent 
thereto. If this meanness has not its foundation in 
us, why are we grieved at it ? In dreams we see our- 
selves naked and acting out our real characters, even 
more clearly than we see others awake. But an un- 
wavering and commanding virtue would compel even 
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its 
ever wakeful authority ; as we are accustomed to say 
carelessly, we should never have drea?ncd of such a 
thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams 
awake. 



300 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

"And, more to lull him in his slumber soft, 
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, 
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, 
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne. 
No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes, 
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne. 
Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lyes 
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes." 



THURSDAY 

" He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone, 
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 

***** 
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night; 
There the red morning touched him with its light. 

***** 
Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome; 
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road. 
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed." 

Emerson. 

When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint 
deliberate and ominous sound of rain drops on our 
cotton roof. The rain had pattered all night, and 
now the whole country wept, the drops falling in the 
river, and on the alders, and in the pastures, and in- 
stead of any bow in the heavens, there was the trill 
of the tree-sparrow all the morning. The cheery faith 
of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole 
woodland quire beside. When we first stepped abroad, 
a flock of sheep, led by their rams, came rushing down 
a ravine in our rear, with heedless haste and unre- 
served frisking, as if unobserved by man, from some 
higher pasture where they had spent the night, to 
taste the herbage by the river-side ; but when their 
leaders caught sight of our white tent through the 
mist, struck with sudden astonishment, with their 
30I 



302 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

fore feet braced, they sustained the rushing torrent 
in their rear, and the whole flock stood still, endeavor- 
ing to solve the mystery in their sheepish brains. At 
length, concluding that it boded no mischief to them, 
they spread themselves out quietly over the field. We 
learned afterward that we had pitched our tent on the 
very spot which a few summers before had been occu- 
pied by a party of Penobscots. We could see rising 
before us through the mist a dark conical eminence 
called Hooksett Pinnacle, a landmark to boatmen, and 
also Uncannunuc Mountain, broad off on the west 
side of the river. 

This was the limit of our voyage, for a few hours 
more in the rain would have taken us to the last of 
the locks, and our boat was too heavy to be dragged 
around the long and numerous rapids which would 
occur. On foot, however, we continued up along the 
bank, feeling our way with a stick through the show- 
ery and foggy day, and climbing over the slippery 
logs in our path with as much pleasure and buoyancy 
as in brightest sunshine ; scenting the fragrance of 
the pines and the wet clay under our feet, and cheered 
by the tones of invisible waterfalls ; with visions of 
toadstools, and wandering frogs, and festoons of moss 
hanging from the spruce trees, and thrushes flitting 
silent under the leaves ; our road still holding together 
through that wettest of weather, like faith, while we 
confidently followed its lead. We managed to keep 
our thoughts dry, however, and only our clothes were 
wet. It was altogether a cloudy and drizzling day, 
with occasional brightenings in the mist, when the 
trill of the tree-sparrow seemed to be ushering in 
sunny hours. 

" Nothing that naturally happens to man, can hurt 



THURSDA Y. 303 

him, earthquakes and thunder storms not excepted," 
said a man of genius, who at this time lived a few 
miles further on our road. When compelled by a 
shower to take shelter under a tree, we may improve 
that opportunity for a more minute inspection of some 
of Nature's works. I have stood under a tree in the 
woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the 
summer, and yet employed myself happily and profit- 
ably there prying with miscroscopic eye into the crev- 
ices of the bark or the leaves or the fungi at my feet. 
" Riches are the attendants of the miser : and the 
heavens rain plenteously upon the mountains."" I can 
fancy that it would be a luxury to stand up to one's chin 
in some retired swamp a whole summer day, scenting 
the wild honeysuckle and bilberry blows, and lulled 
by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes ! A day 
passed in the society of those Greek sages, such as 
described in the Banquet of Xenophon, would not be 
comparable with the dry wit of decayed cranberry 
vines, and the fresh Attic salt of the moss-beds. Say 
twelve hours of genial and familiar converse with the 
leopard frog ; the sun to rise behind alder and dog- 
wood, and climb buoyantly to his meridian of two 
hands' breadth, and finally sink to rest behind some 
bold western hummock. To hear the evening chant 
of the mosquito from a thousand green chapels, and 
the bittern begin to boom from some concealed fort 
like a sunset gun ! — Surely one may as profitably 
be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as 
pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp, 
— are they not as rich experience as warmth and 
dryness ? 

At present, the drops come trickling down the 
stubble while we lie drenched on a bed of withered 



304 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

wild oats, by the side of a bushy hill, and the gather- 
ing in of the clouds, with the last rush and dying 
breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of 
twigs and leaves the country over, enhance the sense 
of inward comfort and sociableness. The birds draw 
closer and are more familiar under the thick foliage, 
seemingly composing new strains upon their roosts 
against the sunshine. What were the amusements 
of the drawing room and the library in comparison, 
if we had them here? We should still sing as of 
old,— 

My books I 'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 
'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large 
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, 
And will not mind to hit their proper targe. 

Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, 
Our Shakspeare's life was rich to live again, 
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true. 
Nor Shakspeare's books, unless his books were men. 

Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough. 
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, 
If juster battles are enacted now 
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown? 

Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn. 
If red or black the gods will favor most, 
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn. 
Struggling to heave some rock against the host. 

Tell Shakspeare to attend some leisure hour. 
For now I 've business with this drop of dew, 
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, — 
I '11 meet him shortly when the sky is blue. 

This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread 
Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use, 
A clover tuft is pillow for my head, 
And violets quite overtop my shoes. 



THURSDA y. 305 

And now the cordial clouds have shut all in, 
And gently swells the wind to say all 's well, 
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin, 
Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell. 

I am well drenched upon my bed of oats ; 
But see that globe come rolling down its stem, 
Now like a lonely planet there it floats, 
And now it sinks into my garment's hem. 

Drip, drip the trees for all the country round, 
And richness rare distils from every bough, 
The wind alone it is makes every sound, 
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below. 

For shame the sun will never show himself. 
Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so, 
My dripping locks — they would become an elf, 
Who in a beaded coat does gaily go. 

The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises 
very abruptly to the height of about two hundred feet, 
near the shore at Hooksett Falls. As Uncannunuc 
Mountain is perhaps the best point from which to view 
the valley of the Merrimack, so this hill affords the 
best view of the river itself. I have sat upon its sum- 
mit, a precipitous rock only a few rods long, in fairer 
weather, when the sun was setting and filling the river 
valley with a flood of light. You can see up and down 
the Merrimack several miles each way. The broad and 
straight river, full of light and life, with its sparkling 
and foaming falls, the islet which divides the stream, 
the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly 
under your feet, so near that you can converse with 
its inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the 
woodland lake at its western base, and the mountains 
in the north and north-east, make a scene of rare 



306 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

beauty and completeness, which the traveller should 
take pains to behold. 

We were hospitably entertained in Concord in New 
Hampshire, which we persisted in calling Nezu Con- 
cord, as we had been wont, to distinguish it from our 
native town, from which we had been told that it was 
named and in part originally settled. This would have 
been the proper place to conclude our voyage, uniting 
Concord with Concord by these meandering rivers, 
but our boat was moored some miles below its port. 

The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now 
Concord in New Hampshire, had been observed by 
explorers, and, according to the historian of Haver- 
hill, in the " year 1726, considerable progress was 
made in the settlement, and a road was cut through 
the wilderness from Haverhill to Penacook. In the 
fall of 1727, the first family, that of Capt. Ebenezer 
Eastman, moved into the place. His team was driven 
by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a Frenchman, and 
he is said to have been the first person who drove 
a team through the wilderness. Soon after, says tra- 
dition, one Ayer, a lad of 18, drove a team consisting 
of ten yoke of oxen to Penacook, swam the river, and 
plowed a portion of the interval. He is supposed to 
have been the first person who plowed land in that 
place. After he had completed his work, he started 
on his return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen 
while recrossing the river, and arrived at Haverhill 
about midnight. The crank of the first saw-mill was 
manufactured in Haverhill, and carried to Penacook 
on a horse." 

But we found that the frontiers were not this way 
any longer. This generation has come into the world 
fatally late for some enterprises. Go where we will 



THURSDA Y. 30/ 

on the surface of things, men have been there before 
us. We cannot now have the pleasure of erecting 
the last house ; that was long ago set up in the suburbs 
of Astoria city, and our boundaries have literally been 
run to the South Sea, according to the old patents. 
But the lives of men, though more extended laterally 
in their range, are still as shallow as ever. Undoubt- 
edly, as a western orator said, "men generally live 
over about the same surface ; some live long and 
narrow, and others live broad and short ; ^'' but it is all 
superficial living. A worm is as good a traveller as a 
grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. 
With all their activity these do not hop away from 
drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid 
evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving 
below its plane ; as the worm escapes drought and 
frost by boring a few inches deeper. The frontiers 
are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a 
Ti\2.x\ fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, 
there is an unsettled wilderness between him and 
Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, further 
still, between him and //. Let him build himself a 
log-house with the bark on where he is, fronting 
IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven 
or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or what- 
ever else may come between him and the reality, and 
save his scalp if he can. 

We now no longer sailed or floated on the river,, but 
trod the unyielding land like pilgrims. Sadi tells 
who may travel ; among others, — "A common me- 
chanic, who can earn a subsistence by the industry of 
his hand, and shall not have to stake his reputation 
for every morsel of bread, as philosophers have said." 



308 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

— He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits 
and game of the most cultivated country. A man 
may travel fast enough and earn his living on the 
road. I have frequently been applied to to do work 
when on a journey ; to do tinkering and repair clocks, 
when I had a knapsack on my back. A man once 
applied to me to go into a factory, stating conditions 
and wages, observing that I succeeded in shutting the 
window of a railroad car in which we were travelling, 
when the other passengers had failed. ^' Hast thou 
not heard of a Sufi, who was hammering some nails 
into the sole of his sandal ; an officer of cavalry took 
him by the sleeve, saying, come along and shoe my 
horse." Farmers have asked me to assist them in 
haying, when I was passing their fields. A man once 
applied to me to mend his umbrella, taking me for an 
umbrella mender, because, being on a journey, I car- 
ried an umbrella in my hand while the sun shone. 
Another wished to buy a tin cup of me, observing 
that I had one strapped to my belt, and a sauce-pan 
on my back. The cheapest way to travel, and the 
way to travel the furthest in the shortest distance, is to 
go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish-line, 
some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. When 
you come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish and 
cook them ; or you can boil a hasty-pudding ; or you 
can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's house for four- 
pence, moisten it in the next brook that crosses the 
road, and dip into it your sugar, — this alone will last 
you a whole day; — or, if you are accustomed to 
heartier living, you can buy a quart of milk for two 
cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding into it, and 
eat it with your own spoon out of your own dish. Any 
one of these things I mean, not all together. I have 



THURSDA V. 309 

travelled thus some hundreds of miles without taking 
any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when 
convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many re- 
spects more profitable, than staying at home. So 
that some have inquired why it would not be best to 
travel always. But I never thought of travelling 
simply as a means of getting a livelihood. A simple 
woman down in Tyngsboro', at whose house I once 
stopped to get a draught of water, when I said, recog- 
nizing the bucket, that I had stopped there nine years 
before for the same purpose, asked if I was not a 
traveller, supposing that I had been travelling ever 
since, and had now come round again, that travelling 
was one of the professions, more or less productive, 
which her husband did not follow. But continued 
travelling is far from productive. It begins with 
wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the 
feet sore, and ere long it will wear a man clean up, 
after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have 
observed that the after-life of those who have travelled 
much is very pathetic. True and sincere travelling 
is no pastime, but it is as serious as the grave, or any 
other part of the human journey, and it requires a long 
probation to be broken into it. I do not speak of 
those that travel sitting, the sedentary travellers whose 
legs hang dangling the while, mere idle symbols of the 
fact, any more than when we speak of sitting hens 
we mean those that sit standing, but I mean those to 
whom travelling is life for the legs. The traveller 
must be born again on the road, and earn a passport 
from the elements, the principal powers that be for 
him. He shall experience at last that old threat of 
his mother fulfilled, that he shall be skinned alive. 
His sores shall gradually deepen themselves that they 



3IO ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

may heal inwardly, while he gives no rest to the sole 
of his foot, and at night weariness must be his pillow, 
that so he may acquire experience against his rainy 
days. — So was it with us. 

Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where 
trout-fishers from distant cities had arrived before us, 
and where, to our astonishment, the settlers dropped 
in at night-fall to have a chat and hear the news, 
though there was but one road, and no other house 
was visible, — as if they had come out of the earth. 
There we sometimes read old newspapers, who never 
before read new ones, and in the rustle of their leaves 
heard the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore, 
instead of the sough of the wind among the pines. 
But then walking had given us an appetite even for 
the least palatable and nutritious food. 

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which 
you have found it impossible to read at home, but 
for which you have still a lingering regard, is the 
best to carry with you on a journey. At a country 
inn, in the barren society of ostlers and travellers, I 
could undertake the writers of the silver or the brazen 
age with confidence. Almost the last regular service 
which I performed in the cause of literature was to 
read the works of 

AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS. 

If you have imagined what a divine work is spread 
out for the poet, and approach this author too, in the 
hope of finding the field at length fairly entered on, 
you will hardly dissent from the words of the prologue, 

" Ipse semipaganus 
Ad sacra Vatum carmen afFero nostrum." 



THURSDA Y. 3 1 1 

I half pagan 
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets. 

Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor 
the elegance and vivacity of Horace, nor will any 
sybil be needed to remind you, that from those older 
Greek poets there is a sad descent to Persius. You 
can scarcely distinguish one harmonious sound amid 
this unmusical bickering with the follies of men. 

One sees that music has its place in thought, but 
hardly as yet in language. When the Muse arrives, 
we wait for her to remould language, and impart to it 
her own rhythm. Hitherto the verse groans and 
labors with its load, and goes not forward blithely, 
singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied, 
indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial 
sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. 
Homer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Marvel, and 
Wordsworth, are but the rustling of leaves and crac- 
kling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the 
sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up 
her voice to sing. Most of all, satire will not be 
sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not marry music to 
their verse, but are measured fault-finders at best ; 
stand but just outside the faults they condemn, and 
so are concerned rather about the monster which 
they have escaped, than the fair prospect before 
them. Let them live on an age, and they will have 
travelled out of his shadow and reach, and found other 
objects to ponder. 

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, 
particeps crimiiiis. One sees not but he had best let 
bad take care of itself, and have to do only with what 
is beyond suspicion. If 5'ou light on the least vestige 
of truth, and it is the weight of the whole body still 



312 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity will not 
suffice to extol it, while no evil is so huge, but you 
grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth 
never turns to rebuke falsehood ; her own straight- 
forwardness is the severest correction. Horace would 
not have written satire so well if he had not been in- 
spired by it, as by a passion, and fondly cherished his 
vein. In his odes, the love always exceeds the hate, 
so that the severest satire still sings itself, and the 
poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected. 

A sort of necessary order in the development of 
Genius is, first. Complaint ; second, Plaint ; third, 
Love. Complaint, which is the condition of Persius, 
lies not in the province of poetry. Ere long the en- 
joyment of a superior good would have changed his 
disgust into regret. We can never have much sym- 
pathy with the complainer ; for after searching nature 
through, we conclude that he must be both plaintiff 
and defendant too, and so had best come to a settle- 
ment without a hearing. He who receives an injury 
is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong doer. 

Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest 
strain of the muse is essentially plaintive. The 
saint's are still tears of joy. Who has ever heard 
the Innocent sing? 

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, 
is the severest satire ; as impersonal as Nature her- 
self, and like the sighs of her winds in the woods, 
which convey ever a slight reproof to the hearer. 
The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the 
satire. 

Hence we have to do only with the rare and frag- 
mentary traits, which least belong to Persius, or shall 
we say, are the properest utterances of his muse ; 



THURSDA Y. 3 1 3 

since that which he says best at any time is what he 
can best say at all times. The Spectators and Ram- 
blers have not failed to cull some quotable sentences 
from this garden too, so pleasant is it to meet even 
the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if our 
neighbor had said it, we should have passed it by as 
hackneyed. Out of these six satires, you may perhaps 
select some twenty lines, which fit so well as many 
thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost 
as readily as a natural image; though when trans- 
lated into familiar language, they lose that insular 
emphasis, which fitted them for quotation. Such 
lines as the following, translation cannot render com- 
mon-place. Contrasting the man of true religion with 
those who, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on a 
secret commerce with the gods, he says, — 

" Haud cuivispromptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros, 
Tollere de templis; et aperto vivere voto." 

It is not easy for every one to take murmurs and low 
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow. 

To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanc- 
tu7n sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are 
the broad noon of his existence. Why should he 
betake himself to a subterranean crypt, as if it were 
the only holy ground in all the world which he had 
left unprofaned ? The obedient soul would only the 
more discover and familiarize things, and escape 
more and more into light and air, as having hence- 
forth done with secrecy, so that the universe shall 
not seem open enough for it. At length, it is neg- 
lectful even of that silence which is consistent with 
true modesty, but by its independence of all confi- 



314 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

dence in its disclosures, makes that which it imparts 
so private to the hearer, that it becomes the care of 
the whole world that modesty be not infringed. 

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, 
there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most 
indifferent acts may be matter for secrecy, but what- 
ever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, 
by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as 
light. 

In the third satire, he asks, 

" Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum? 
An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove, 
Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis? " 

Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which 

thou directest thy bow? 
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay, 
Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore ? 

The bad sense is always a secondary one. Lan- 
guage does not appear to have justice done it, but is 
obviously cramped and narrowed in its significance, 
when any meanness is described. The truest con- 
struction is not put upon it. What may readily be 
fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is here thrown in 
the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes the front of 
his offence. Universally, the innocent man will come 
forth from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing, 
the combined din of reproof and commendation, 
with a faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices 
always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in 
their best estate are but plausible imitations of the 
latter. Falsehood never attains to the dignity of 
entire falseness, but is only an inferior sort of truth ; 



THURSDA Y. 3 I 5 

if it were more thoroughly false, it would incur 
danger of becoming true. 

" Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit," 

is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the 
subtle discernment of the language would have taught 
us, with all his negligence he is still secure ; but 
the sluggard, notwithstanding his heedlessness, is 
insecure. 

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporane- 
ous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all 
time. The cunning mind travels farther back than 
Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the 
present with its revelation. The utmost thrift and 
industry of thinking give no man any stock in life ; 
his credit with the inner world is no better, his 
capital no larger. He must try his fortune again to- 
day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present 
for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. 
The word that is written may be postponed, but not 
that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, 
let the occasion say it. All the world is forward to 
prompt him who gets up to live without his creed in 
his pocket. 

In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find, — 

" Stat contra ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem, 
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo." 

Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear, 

That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing. 

Only they who do not see how anything might be better 
done, are forward to try their hand on it. Even the 
master workman must be encouraged by the reflection, 



3l6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

that his awkwardness will be incompetent to do that 
thing harm, to which his skill may fail to do justice. 
Here is no apology for neglecting to do many things 
from a sense of our incapacity, — for what deed does 
not fall maimed and imperfect from our hands ? — but 
only a warning to bungle less. 

The satires of Persius are the farthest possible 
from inspired ; evidently a chosen, not imposed sub- 
ject. Perhaps I have given him credit for more ear- 
nestness than is apparent ; but it is certain, that that 
which alone we can call Persius, which is forever in- 
dependent and consistent, was in earnest, and so 
sanctions the sober consideration of all. The artist 
and his work are not to be separated. The most wil- 
fully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, 
but the deed and the doer together make ever one 
sober fact. There is but one stage for the peasant 
and the actor. The buffoon cannot bribe you to 
laugh always at his grimaces ; they shall sculpture 
themselves in Egyptian granite, to stand heavy as the 
pyramids on the ground of his character. 

Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank 
forest path which meanders up the Pemigewasset, 
now more like an otter's or a marten's trail, or where 
a beaver had dragged his trap, than where the wheels 
of travel raise a dust ; where towns begin to serve as 
gores, only to hold the earth together. The wild 
pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on the dead 
limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin's size. The 
very yards of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts 
of mountains, and, as we passed, we looked up at a 
steep angle at the stems of maples waving in the 
clouds. 



THURSDA Y. 3 1 7 

Far up in the country, — for we would be faithful 
to our experience, — in Thornton, perhaps, we met a 
soldier lad in the woods, going to muster in full regi- 
mentals, and holding the middle of the road ; deep in 
the forest with shouldered musket and military step, 
and thoughts of war and glory all to himself. It was 
a sore trial to the youth, tougher than many a battle, 
to get by us creditably and with soldierlike bearing. 
Poor man ! He actually shivered like a reed in his 
thin military pants, and by the time we had got up 
with him, all the sternness that becomes the soldier 
had forsaken his face, and he skulked past as if he 
were driving his father's sheep under a sword-proof 
helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra 
armor then, who could not easily dispose of his nat- 
ural arms. And for his legs, they were like heavy 
artillery in boggy places ; better to cut the traces and 
forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one 
with another for want of other foes. But he did get 
by and get off with all his munitions, and lived to 
fight another day ; and I do not record this as cast- 
ing any suspicion on his honor and real bravery in 
the field. 

Wandering on through notches which the streams 
had made, by the side and over the brows of hoar 
hills and mountains, across the stumpy, rocky, for- 
ested and bepastured country, we at length crossed on 
prostrate trees over the Amonoosuck, and breathed 
the free air of Unappropriated Land. Thus, in fair 
days as well as foul, we had traced up the river to 
which our native stream is a tributary, until from 
Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped 
by our side, and when we had passed its fountain- 
head, the Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny channel 



3l8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

was crossed at a stride, guiding us toward its distant 
source among the mountains, and at length, without 
its guidance, we were enabled to reach the summit of 
Agiocochook. 



" Sweet days, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky. 
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 
For thou must die." 

Herbert. 



the melon man, in whose corn-barn we had hung our 
tent and buffaloes and other things to dry, was al- 
ready picking his hops, with many women and chil- 
dren to help him. We bought one watermelon, the 
largest in his patch, to carry with us for ballast. It 
was Nathan's, which he might sell if he pleased, hav- 
ing been conveyed to him in the green state, and 
owned daily by his eyes. After due consultation 
with "Father," the bargain was concluded, — we to 
buy it at a venture on the vine, green or ripe, our 
risk, and pay "what the gentlemen pleased." It 
proved to be ripe ; for we had had honest experience 
in selecting this fruit. 

Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under Uncan- 
nunuc Mountain, with a fair wind and the current in 
our favor, we commenced our return voyage at noon, 
sitting at our ease and conversing, or in silence watch- 
ing for the last trace of each reach in the river as a 
bend concealed it from our view. As the season was 



THURSDAY. 319 

further advanced, the wind now blew steadily from 
the north, and with our sail set we could occasionally 
lie on our oars without loss of time. The lumber- 
men throwing down wood from the top of the high 
bank, thirty or forty feet above the water, that it 
might be sent down stream, paused in their work to 
watch our retreating sail. By this time, indeed, we 
were well known to the boatmen, and were hailed as 
the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we sailed 
rapidly down the river, shut in between two mounds 
of earth, the sound of this timber rolled down the 
bank enhanced the silence and vastness of the noon, 
and we fancied that only the primeval echoes were 
awakened. The vision of a distant scow just heaving 
in sight round a headland, also increased by contrast 
the solitude. 

Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in 
the most oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive 
and savage nature, in which Scythians, and Ethiopians, 
and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and 
shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and 
eclipse, there? The works of man are every where 
swallowed up in the immensity of Nature. The 
.(4^gean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian. 
Also there is all the refinement of civilized life in the 
woods under a sylvan garb. The wildest scenes have 
an air of domesticity and homeliness even to the citi- 
zen, and when the flicker's cackle is heard in the 
clearing, he is reminded that civilization has wrought 
but little change there. Science is welcome to the 
deepest recesses of the forest, for there too nature 
obeys the same old civil laws. The little red bug on 
the stump of a pine, for it the wind shifts and the sun 
breaks through the clouds. In the wildest nature, 



320 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

there is not only the material of the most cultivated 
life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result, but a 
greater refinement already than is ever attained by 
man. There is papyrus by the river-side, and rushes 
for light, and the goose only flies overhead, ages be- 
fore the studious are born or letters invented, and 
that literature which the former suggest, and even 
from the first have rudely served, it may be man does 
not yet use them to express. Nature is prepared to 
welcome into her scenery the finest work of human 
art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist 
never appears in his work. 

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the or- 
dinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also 
be wild or natural in a good sense. Man tames Na- 
ture only that he may at last make her more free even 
than he found her, though he may never yet have 
succeeded. 

With this propitious breeze, and the help of our 
oars, we soon reached the Falls of Amoskeag, and 
the mouth of the Piscataquoag, and recognized, as 
we swept rapidly by, many a fair bank and islet on 
which our eyes had rested in the upward passage. 
Our boat was like that which Chaucer describes in his 
Dream, in which the knight took his departure from 
the island, 

" To journey for his marriage, 
And return with such an host, 
That wedded might be least and most. * * 
Which barge was as a marfs thought, 
After his pleasure to him brought. 
The queene herself accustomed aye 
In the same barge to play. 
It needed neither mast ne rother, 



THURSDAY. 32 1 

I have not heard of such another, 

No master for the governance, 

Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce 

Without labor east and west, 

All was one, calme or tempest." 

So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the saying of 
Pythagoras, though we had no pecuhar right to re- 
member it, — "It is beautiful when prosperity is 
present with intellect, and when sailing as it were 
with a prosperous wind, actions are performed look- 
ing to virtue ; just as a pilot looks to the motions of 
the stars." All the world reposes in beauty to him 
who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely 
on his path without secret violence ; as he who sails 
down a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark 
in the middle, and carry it round the falls. The rip- 
ples curled away in our wake, like ringlets from the 
head of a child, while we steadily held on our course, 
and under the bows we watched 

" The swaying soft. 
Made by the delicate wave parted in front, 
As through the gentle element we move 
Like shadows gliding through untroubled dreams." 

The forms of beauty fall naturally around the path of 
him who is in the performance of his proper work ; as 
the curled shavings drop from the plane, and borings 
cluster round the auger. Undulation is the gentlest 
and most ideal of motions, produced by one fluid 
falling on another. Rippling is a more graceful flight. 
From a hill-top you may detect in it the wings of 
birds endlessly repeated. The two ivaving lines 
which represent the flight of birds appear to have 
been copied from the ripple. 



322 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

The trees made an admirable fence to the land- 
scape, skirting the horizon on every side. The single 
trees and the groves left standing on the interval, ap- 
peared naturally disposed, though the farmer had con- 
sulted only his convenience, for he too falls into the 
scheme of Nature. Art can never match the luxury 
and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen; 
it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in 
comparison ; but Nature, even when she is scant and 
thin outwardly, satisfies us still*by the assurance of a 
certain generosity at the roots. In swamps, where 
there is only here and there an evergreen tree amid 
the quaking moss and cranberry beds, the bareness 
does not suggest poverty. The double-spruce, which 
I had hardly noticed in gardens, attracts me in such 
places, and now first I understand why men try to 
make them grow about their houses. But though 
there may be very perfect specimens in front-yard 
plots, their beauty is for the most part ineffectual 
there, for there is no such assurance of kindred wealth 
beneath and around them to make them show to 
advantage. As we have said, Nature is a greater and 
more perfect art, the art of God ; though, referred to 
herself, she is genius, and there is a similarity between 
her operations and man's art even in the details and 
trifles. When the overhanging pine drops into the 
water, by the sun and water, and the wind rubbing it 
against the shore, its boughs are worn into fantastic 
shapes, and white and smooth, as if turned in a 
lathe, Man's art has wisely imitated those forms into 
which all matter is most inclined to run, as foliage and 
fruit. A hammock swung in a grove assumes the 
exact form of a canoe, broader or narrower, and 
higher or lower at the ends, as more or fewer persons 



THURSDAY. 323 

are in it, and it rolls in the air with the motion of the 
body, like a canoe in the water. Our art leaves its 
shavings and its dust about; her art exhibits itself 
even in the shavings and the dust which we make. 
She has perfected herself by an eternity of practice. 
The world is well kept ; no rubbish accumulates ; the 
morning air is clear even at this day, and no dust has 
settled on the grass. Behold how the evening now 
steals over the fields, the shadows of the trees creep- 
ing further and further into the meadow, and ere long 
the stars will come to bathe in these retired waters. 
Her undertakings are secure and never fail. If I were 
awakened from a deep sleep, I should know which 
side of the meridian the sun might be by the aspect 
of nature, and by the chirp of the crickets, and yet no 
painter can paint this difference. The landscape con- 
tains a thousand dials which indicate the natural 
divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand styles 
point to the hour. — 

" Not only o'er the dial's face, 

This silent phantom day by day, 
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace 

Steals moments, months, and years away; 
From hoary rock and aged tree, 

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls, 
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea. 

From every blade of grass it falls." 

It is almost the only game which the trees play at, 
this tit-for-tat, now this side in the sun, now that, the 
drama of the day. In deep ravines under the east- 
ern sides of cliffs, Night forwardly plants her foot 
even at noonday, and as Day retreats she steps 
intb his trenches, skulking from tree to tree, from 
fence to fence, until at last she sits in his citadel 



324 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

and draws out her forces into the plahi. It may be 
that the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, 
not only because of the greater transparency of its 
atmosphere, but because we naturally look most into 
the west, as forward into the day, and so in the fore- 
noon see the sunny side of things, but in the after- 
noon the shadow of every tree. 

The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh and 
leisurely wind is blowing over the river, making long 
reaches of bright ripples. The river has done its 
stint, and appears not to flow, but lie at its length re- 
flecting the light, and the haze over the woods is like 
the inaudible panting, or rather the gentle perspira- 
tion of resting nature, rising from a myriad of pores 
into the attenuated atmosphere. 

On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred and 
forty-two years before this, probably about this time 
in the afternoon, there were hurriedly paddling down 
this part of the river, between the pine woods which 
then fringed these banks, two white women and a 
boy, who had left an island at the mouth of the Con- 
toocook before daybreak. They were slightly clad 
for the season, in the English fashion, and handled 
their paddles unskilfully, but with nervous energy and 
determination, and at the bottom of their canoe lay 
the still bleeding scalps of ten of the aborigines. 
They were Hannah Dustan, and her nurse, Mary Neff, 
both of Haverhill, eighteen miles from the mouth of 
this river, and an English boy, named Samuel Len- 
nardson, escaping from captivity among the Indians. 
On the 15th of March previous, Hannah Dustan 
had been compelled to rise from childbed, and half- 
dressed, with one foot bare, accompanied by her 



THURSDAY. 325 

nurse, commence an uncertain march, in still inclem- 
ent weather, through the snow and the wilderness. 
She had seen her seven elder children flee with 
their father, but knew not of their fate. She had 
seen her infant's brains dashed out against an 
apple tree, and had left her own and her neighbors' 
dwellings in ashes. When she reached the wig- 
wam of her captor, situated on an island in the 
Merrimack, more than twenty miles above where 
we now are, she had been told that she and her 
nurse were soon to be taken to a distant Indian set- 
tlement, and there made to run the gauntlet naked. 
The family of this Indian consisted. of two men, three 
women, and seven children, beside an English boy, 
whom she found a prisoner among them. Having 
determined to attempt her escape, she instructed the 
boy to inquire of one of the men, how he should 
despatch an enemy in the quickest manner, and take 
his scalp. " Strike 'em there," said he, placing his 
finger on his temple, and he also showed him how to 
take off the scalp. On the morning of the 31st 
she arose before daybreak, and awoke her nurse and 
the boy, and taking the Indians' tomahawks, they 
killed them all in their sleep, excepting one favorite 
boy, and one squaw who fled wounded with him to the 
woods. The English boy struck the Indian who had 
given him the information on the temple, as he had 
been directed. They then collected all the provision 
they could find, and took their master's tomahawk 
and gun, and scuttling all the canoes but one, com- 
menced their flight to Haverhill, distant about sixty 
miles by the river. But after having proceeded a 
short distance, fearing that her story would not be 
believed if she should escape to tell it, they returned 



^26 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

to the silent wigwam, and taking off the scalps of the 
dead, put them into a bag as proofs of what they had 
done, and then retracing their steps to the shore in 
the twilight, recommenced their voyage. 

Early this morning this deed was performed, and 
now, perchance, these tired women and this boy, 
their clothes stained with blood, and their minds 
racked with alternate resolution and fear, are mak- 
ing a hasty meal of parched corn and moose meat, 
while their canoe glides under these pine roots whose 
stumps are still standing on the bank. They are 
thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on 
that solitary isle far up the stream, and of the relent- 
less living warriors who are in pursuit. Every with- 
ered leaf which the winter has left seems to know 
their story, and in its rustling to repeat it and betray 
them. An Indian lurks behind every rock and pine, 
and their nerves cannot bear the tapping of a wood- 
pecker. Or they forget their own dangers and their 
deeds in conjecturing the fate of their kindred, and 
whether, if they escape the Indians, they shall find 
the former still alive. They do not stop to cook their 
meals upon the bank, nor land, except to carry their 
canoe about the falls. The stolen birch forgets its 
master and does them good service, and the swollen 
current bears them swiftly along with little need of the 
paddle, except to steer and keep them warm by exer- 
cise. For ice is floating in the river ; the spring is 
opening ; the muskrat and the beaver are driven out 
of their holes by the flood ; deer gaze at them from 
the bank ; a few faint-singing forest birds, perchance, 
fly across the river to the northernmost shore; the 
fish-hawk sails and screams overhead, and geese fly 
over with a startling clangor ; but they do not observe 



THURSDA V. 327 

these things, or they speedily forget them. They do 
not smile or chat all day. Sometimes they pass an 
Indian grave surrounded by its paling on the bank, or 
the frame of a wigwam, with a few coals left behind, 
or the withered stalks still rustling in the Indian's 
solitary cornfield on the interval. The birch stripped 
of its bark, or the charred stump where a tree has 
been burned down to be made into a canoe, these are 
the only traces of man, — a fabulous wild man to us. 
On either side, the primeval forest stretches away 
uninterrupted to Canada or to the " South Sea " ; to 
the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but 
to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and 
cheerful as the smile of the Great Spirit. 

While we loiter here this autumn evening, looking 
for a spot retired enough, where we shall quietly rest 
to-night, they thus, in that chilly March evening, one 
hundred and forty-two years before us, with wind and 
current favoring, have already glided out of sight, not 
to camp, as we shall, at night, but while two sleep one 
will manage the canoe, and the swift stream bear them 
onward to the settlements, it may be, even to old John 
Lovewell's house on Salmon Brook to-night. 

According to the historian, they escaped as by a 
miracle all roving bands of Indians, and reached their 
homes in safety, with their trophies, for which the 
General Court paid them fifty pounds. The family 
of Hannah Dustan all assembled alive once more, ex- 
cept the infant whose brains were dashed out against 
the apple tree, and there have been many who in later 
times have lived to say that they had eaten of the fruit 
of that apple tree. 



328 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened 
since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its an- 
tiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not 
regulate our historical time by the English standard, 
nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman 
by the Greek. "We must look a long way back," 
says Raleigh, "to find the Romans giving laws to 
nations, and their consuls brmging kings and princes 
bound in chains to Rome in triumph ; to see men go 
to Greece for wisdom, or Ophir for gold ; when now 
nothing remains but a poor paper remembrance of 
their former condition." — And yet, in one sense, not 
so far back as to find the Penacooks and Pawtuckets 
using bows and arrows and hatchets of stone, on the 
banks of the Merrimack. From this September after- 
noon, and from between these now cultivated shores, 
those times seem more remote than the dark ages. 
On beholding an old picture of Concord, as it appeared 
but seventy-five years ago, with a fair, open prospect 
and a light on trees and river, as if it were broad 
noon, I find that I had not thought the sun shone in 
those days, or that men lived in broad daylight then. 
Still less do we imagine the sun shining on hill 
and valley during Philip's war, on the warpath of 
Church or Philip, or later of Lovewell or Paugus, 
with serene summer weather, but they must have 
lived and fought in a dim twilight or night. 

The age of the world is great enough for our 
imaginations, even according to the Mosaic account, 
without borrowing any years from the geologist. 
From Adam and Eve at one leap sheer down to the 
deluge, and then through the ancient monarchies, 
through Babylon and Thebes, Brahma and Abraham, 
to Greece and the Argonauts ; whence we might start 



THURSDAY. 329 

again with Orpheus and the Trojan war, the Pyramids 
and the Olymi^ic games, and Homer and Athens, for 
our stages ; and after a breathing space at the build- 
ing of Rome, continue our journey down through 
Odin and Christ to — America. It is a wearisome 
while. — And yet the lives of but sixty old women, 
such as live under the hill, say of a century each, 
strung together, are sufficient to reach over the whole 
ground. Taking hold of hands they would span the 
interval from Eve to my own mother. A respectable 
tea-party merely, — whose gossip would be Universal 
History. The fourth old woman from myself suckled 
Columbus, — the ninth was nurse to the Norman 
Conqueror, — the nineteenth was the Virgin Mary, — 
the twenty-fourth the Cumaean Sibyl, — the thirtieth 
was at the Trojan war and Helen her name, — the 
thirty-eighth was Queen Semiramis, — the sixtieth was 
Eve the mother of mankind. So much for the 

— " old woman that lives under the hill, 
And if she 's not gone she lives there still." 

It will not take a very great grand-daughter of hers to 
be in at the death of time. 

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our 
narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, 
there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction 
even, is only to take leisure and liberty to describe 
some things more exactly as they are. A true account 
of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense 
always takes a hasty and superficial view. Though I 
am not much acquainted with the works of Goethe, 
I should say that it was one of his chief excellencies 
as a writer, that he is satisfied with giving an exact 
description of things as they appear to him, and their 



330 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

effect upon him. Most travellers have not self-respect 
enough to do this simply, and make objects and events 
stand around them as the centre, but still imagine more 
favorable positions and relations than the actual ones, 
and so we get no valuable report from them at all. 
In his ItaHan Travels Goethe jogs along at a snail's 
pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath 
and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not 
merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and 
scene of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, 
daily shined on by the sun, and nightly by the moon. 
Even the few showers are faithfully recorded. He 
speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose object is 
faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, for the 
most part, in the order in which he sees it. Even 
his reflections do not interfere with his descriptions. 
In one place he speaks of himself as giving so glow- 
ing and truthful a description of an old tower to the 
peasants who had gathered around him, that they 
who had been born and brought up in the neighbor- 
hood must needs look over their shoulders, " that," to 
use his own words, "they might behold with their 
eyes, what I had praised to their ears " — " and I 
added nothing, not even the ivy which for centuries 
had decorated the walls." It would thus be possible 
for inferior minds to produce invaluable books, if this 
very moderation were not the evidence of superiority ; 
for the wise are not so much wiser than others as 
respecters of their own wisdom. Some, poor in 
spirit, record plaintively only what has happened to 
them ; but others how they have happened to the 
universe, and the judgment which they have awarded 
to circumstances. Above all, he possessed a hearty 
good-will to all men, and never wrote a.cross or even 



THURSDAY. 33 1 

careless word. On one occasion the post-boy snivel- 
ling " Signor perdonate, questa e la mia patria,'^ he 
confesses that '■'■ to me poor northerner came some- 
thing tear-like into the eyes." 

Goethe's whole education and life were those of the 
artist. He lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In 
his autobiography he describes accurately the life of 
the author of Wilhelm Meister. For as there is 
in that book, mingled with a rare and serene wis- 
dom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of trifles, 
wisdom applied to produce a constrained and partial 
and merely well-bred man, — a magnifying of the 
theatre till life itself is turned into a stage, for which 
it is our duty to study our parts well, and conduct 
with propriety and precision, — so in the autobiog- 
raphy, the fault of his education is, so to speak, its 
artistic completeness. Nature is hindered, though 
she prevails at last in making an unusually catholic 
impression on the boy. It is the life of a city boy, 
whose toys are pictures and works of art, whose 
wonders are the theatre and kingly processions and 
crownings. As the youth studied minutely the order 
and the degrees in the imperial procession, and suf- 
fered none of its effect to be lost on him ; so the man 
aimed to secure a rank in society which would satisfy 
his notion of fitness and respectability. He was de- 
frauded of much which the savage boy enjoys. Indeed 
he himself has occasion to say in this very autobiog- 
raphy, when at last he escapes into the woods with- 
out the gates, — " Thus much is certain, that only the 
undefinable, wide-expanding feelings of youth and of 
uncultivated nations are adapted to the sublime, which 
whenever it may be excited in us through external 
objects, since it is either formless, or else moulded 



332 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

into forms which are incomprehensible, must surround 
us with a grandeur which we find above our reach." 
He further says of himself, — "I had lived among 
painters from my childhood, and had accustomed 
myself to look at objects as they did, with reference 
to art." And this was his practice to the last. He 
was even too well-bred to be thoroughly bred. He 
says that he had had no intercourse with the lowest 
class of his towns-boys. The child should have the 
advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and 
is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and 
exposure. — 

" The laws of Nature break the rules of Art." 

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed 
is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be con- 
founded. The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, 
is an originator, an inspired or demonic man,- who 
produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet 
unexplored. The Artist is he who detects and ap- 
plies the law from observation of the works of 
Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is 
he who merely applies the rules which others have 
detected. There has been no man of pure Genius; 
as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius. 

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind. 

The expressions of the poet cannot be analyzed ; 
his sentence is one word, whose syllables are words. 
There are indeed no words quite worthy to be set 
to his music. But what matter if we do not hear the 
words always, if we hear the music? 

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was 
not written exactly at the right crisis, though it 
may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only 



THURSDAY. 333 

by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is 
not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a 
vaster receding thought. 

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression 
fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and 
unimpededly received by those for whom it was 
matured. 

If you can speak what you will never hear, — if 
you can write what you will never read, you have 
done rare things. 



The work we choose should be our own, 
God lets alone. 

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness 
of God. 

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone 
walls have their foundation below the frost. 

What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like 
the forms of lichens and leaves. There is a certain 
perfection in accident which we never consciously 
attain. Draw a blunt quill filled with ink over a 
sheet of paper, and fold the paper before the ink is 
dry, transversely to this line, and a delicately shaded 
and regular figure will be produced, in some respects 
more pleasing than an elaborate drawing. 

The talent of composition is very dangerous, — 
the striking out the heart of life at a blow, as the 
Indian takes off a scalp. I feel as if my life had 
grown more outward when I can express it. 

On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe 
writes, " The Tees flows now more gently, and 
makes in many places broad sands. On the land, 



334 ^ ^EEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

near to the water, upon the hill-sides, everything is 
so closely planted one to another, that you think 
they must choke one another, — vineyards, maize, 
mulberry trees, apples, pears, quinces, and nuts. 
The dwarf elder throws itself vigorously over the 
walls. Ivy grows with strong stems up the rocks, 
and spreads itself wide over them, the lizard glides 
through the intervals, and everything that wanders 
to and fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures of 
art. The women's tufts of hair bound up, the men's 
bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent oxen 
which they drive home from market, the little asses 
with their loads, — everything forms a living, animated 
Heinrich Roos. And now that it is evening, in the 
mild air a few clouds rest upon the mountains, in the 
heavens more stand still than move, and immediately 
after sunset the chirping of crickets begins to grow 
more loud ; then one feels for once at home in the 
world, and not as concealed or in exile. I am con- 
tented as though I had been born and brought up 
here, and were now returning from a Greenland or 
whaling voyage. Even the dust of my Fatherland, 
which is often whirled about the wagon, and which 
for so long a time I had not seen, is greeted. The 
clock-and-bell jingling of the crickets is altogether 
lovely, penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely 
when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a field of 
such songstresses. One fancies that they really en- 
hance one another. Also the evening is perfectly 
mild as the day." 

" If one who dwelt in the south and came hither 
from the south should hear of my rapture hereupon, 
he would deem me very childish. Alas ! what I here 
express I have long known while I suffered under an 



THURSDAY. 335 

unpropitious heaven, and now may I joyful feel this 
joy as an exception, which we should enjoy everforth 
as an eternal necessity of our nature." 

Thus we "sayled by thought and pleasaunce," as 
Chaucer says, and all things seemed with us to flow ; 
the shore itself, and the distant cliffs, were dissolved 
by the undiluted air. The hardest material seemed 
to obey the same law with the most fluid, and so 
indeed in the long run it does. Trees were but rivers 
of sap and woody fibre, flowing from the atmosphere, 
and emptying into the earth by their trunks, as their 
roots flowed upward to the surface. And in the 
heavens there were rivers of stars, and milky ways, 
already beginning to gleam and ripple over our 
heads. There were rivers of rock on the surface of 
the earth, and rivers of ore in its bowels, and our 
thoughts flowed and circulated, and this portion of 
time was but the current hour. Let us wander where 
we will, the universe is built round about us, and we 
are central still. If we look into the heavens they 
are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf as 
bottomless, it would be concave also. The sky is 
curved downward to the earth in the horizon, because 
we stand on the plain. I draw down its skirts. The 
stars so low there seem loath to depart, but by a cir- 
cuitous path to be remembering me, and returning on 
their steps. 

We had already passed by broad daylight the scene 
of our encampment at Coos Falls, and at length we 
pitched our camp on the west bank, in the northern 
part of Merrimack, nearly opposite to the large island 
on which we had spent the noon in our way up the 
river. 



336 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

There we went to bed that summer evening, on a 
sloping shelf in the bank, a couple of rods from our 
boat, which was drawn up on the sand, and just behind 
a thin fringe of oaks which bordered the river ; with- 
out having disturbed any inhabitants but the spiders 
in the grass, which came out by the light of our lamp 
and crawled over our buffaloes. When we looked 
out from under the tent, the trees were seen dimly 
through the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the 
grass, which seemed to rejoice in the night, and with 
the damp air we inhaled a solid fragrance. Having 
eaten our supper of hot cocoa and bread and water- 
melon, we soon grew weary of conversing and writing 
in our journals, and putting out the lantern which 
hung from the tent pole, fell asleep. 

Unfortunately many things have been omitted 
which should have been recorded in our journal, for 
though we made it a rule to set down all our experi- 
ences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to 
keep, for the important experience rarely allows us to 
remember such obligations, and so indifferent things 
get recorded, while that is frequently neglected. It 
is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at 
any time, because to write it is not what interests us. 

Whenever we awoke in the night, still eking out 
our dreams with half-awakened thoughts, it was not 
till after an interval, when the wind breathed harder 
than usual, flapping the curtains of the tent, and 
causing its cords to vibrate, that we remembered that 
we lay on the bank of the Merrimack, and not in 
our chamber at home. With our heads so low in the 
grass, we heard the river whirling and sucking, and 
lapsing downward, kissing the shore as it went, some- 
times ripphng louder than usual, and again its mighty 



THURSDAY. 33/ 

current making only a slight limpid trickling sound, 
as if our water-pail had sprung a leak, and the water 
were flowing into the grass by our side. The wind, 
rustling the oaks and hazels, impressed us like a 
wakeful and inconsiderate person up at midnight, 
moving about and putting things to rights, occasion- 
ally stirring up whole drawers full of leaves at a puff. 
There seemed to be a great haste and preparation 
throughout Nature, as for a distinguished visitor; 
all her aisles had to be swept in the night, by a 
thousand hand-maidens, and a thousand pots to be 
boiled for the next day's feasting ; — such a whisper- 
ing bustle, as if ten thousand fairies made their 
fingers fly, silently sewing at the new carpet with 
which the earth was to be clothed, and the new dra- 
pery which was to adorn the trees. And then the 
wind would lull and die away and we like it fell 
asleep again. 



FRIDAY. 

" The Boteman strayt 
Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse, 
Ne ever shroncke, ne ever sought to bayt 
His tryed armes for toylesome wearinesse ; 
But with his oares did sweepe the watry wildernesse." 

Spenser. 

" Summer's robe grows 
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows." 

Donne. 

As we lay awake long before daybreak, listening 
to the rippling of the river and the rustling of the 
leaves, in suspense whether the wind blew up or down 
the stream, was favorable or unfavorable to our voy- 
age, we already suspected that there was a change 
in the weather, from a freshness as of autumn in these 
sounds. The wind in the woods sounded like 
an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring amid 
rocks, and we even felt encouraged by the unusual 
activity of the elements. He who hears the rippling 
of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly 
despair. That night was the turning point in the 
season. We had gone to bed in summer, and we 
awoke in autumn ; for summer passes into autumn 
in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning 
of a leaf. 

We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left 
it, and as if waiting for us, there on the shore, in 
autumn, all cool and dripping with dew, and our 
338 



FRiDA y. 339 

tracks still fresh in the wet sand around it, the fairies 
all gone or concealed. Before five o'clock we pushed 
it into the fog, and leaping in, at one shove were out 
of sight of the shores, and began to sweep downward 
with the rushing river, keeping a sharp look out for 
rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgUng water, 
and a solid bank of fog on every side forming a small 
yard around us. We soon passed the mouth of the 
Souhegan and the village of Merrimack, and as the 
mist gradually rolled away, and we were relieved from 
the trouble of watching for rocks, we saw by the flit- 
ting clouds, by the first russet tinge on the hills, by 
the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and tjie shore 
itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later 
in the day, by the hue of the grape vine, the gold- 
finch on the willow, the flickers flying in flocks, 
and when we passed near enough to the shore, as 
we fancied, by the faces of men, that the Fall had 
commenced. The cottages looked more snug and 
comfortable, and their inhabitants were seen only for 
a moment, and then went quietly in and shut the 
door, retreating inward to the haunts of summer. 

"And now the cold autumnal dews are seen 
To cobweb ev'ry green ; 
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear 
The fast declining year." 

We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and 
even the water had acquired a grayer hue. The 
sumach, grape, and maple were already changed, and 
the milkweed had turned to a deep rich yellow. In 
all woods the leaves were fast ripening for their fall ; 
for their full veins and lively gloss mark the ripe 
leaf, and not the sered one of the poets ; and we knew 



340 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the 
earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke 
along the edge of the meadow. Already the cattle 
were heard to low wildly in the pastures and along 
the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in 
apprehension of the withering of the grass and of the 
approach of winter. Our thoughts too began to 
rustle. 

As I pass along the streets of our village of Con- 
cord on the day of our annual Cattle Show, when 
it usually happens that the leaves of the elms 
and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground 
under the breath of the October wind, the lively 
spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as any 
plow-boy's let loose that day; and they lead my 
thoughts away to the rustling woods, where the 
trees are preparing for their winter campaign. This 
autumnal festival, when men are gathered in crowds 
in the streets as regularly and by as natural a law 
as the leaves cluster and rustle by the wayside, is 
naturally associated in my mind with the fall of the 
year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like 
a hoarse symphony or running base to the rusthng 
of the leaves. The wind goes hurrying down the 
country, gleaning every loose straw that is left in 
the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to 
scud before it, — having donned his best pea-jacket 
and pepper-and-salt waistcoat, his unbent trousers, 
outstanding rigging of duck, or kersymere, or cor- 
duroy, and his furry hat withal, — to country fairs 
and cattle-shows, to that Rome among the villages 
where the treasures of the year are gathered. All 
the land over they go leaping the fences with their 



FRIDAY. 341 

tough idle palms, which have never learned to hang 
by their sides, amid the low of calves and the bleat- 
ing of sheep, — Amos, Abner, Elnathan, Elbridge, — 

" From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain." 

I love these sons of earth, every mother's son of 
them, with their great hearty hearts rushing tumul- 
tuously in herds from spectacle to spectacle, as if 
fearful lest there should not be time between sun and 
sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more 
than in haying time. 

" Wise nature's darlings, they live in the world 
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled." 

Running hither and thither with appetite for the 
coarse pastimes of the day, now with boisterous speed 
at the heels of the inspired negro from whose larynx 
the melodies of all Congo and Guinea coast have 
broke loose into our streets ; now to see the proces- 
sion of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and 
grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch 
cows as unspotted as I sis or lo. Such as had no 
love for Nature 

" at all, 
Came lovers home from this great festival." 

They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits 
to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show 
of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men 
sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves, like 
migrating finches, this is the true harvest of the year, 
when the air is but the breath of men, and the rus- 
tling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd. We 
read now-a-days of the ancient festivals, games, and 
processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a 



342 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

little incredulity, or at least with little sympathy; 
but how natural and irrepressible in every people 
is some hearty and palpable greeting of Nature. The 
Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the rude primitive trage- 
dians with their procession and goat-song, and the 
whole paraphernalia of the Panathenaea, which appear 
so antiquated and peculiar, have their parallel now. 
The husbandman is always a better Greek than the 
scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom 
still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow 
gray in commemorating it. The farmers crowd to 
the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law, 
which Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally 
as bees swarm and follow their queen. 

It is worth the while to see the country's people, 
how they pour into the town, the sober farmer folk, 
now all agog, their very shirt and coat collars point- 
ing forward, — collars so broad as if they had put 
their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions 
always tend to superfluity, — and with an unusual 
springiness in their gait, jabbering earnestly to one 
another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure 
to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, 
and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole 
like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever shabby 
coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never 
dressed ; come to see the sport, and have a hand 
in what is going, — to know "what's the row," if 
there is any ; to be where some men are drunk, some 
horses race, some cockerels fight ; anxious to be 
shaking props under a table, and above all to see 
the "striped pig." He especially is the creature of 
the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his 
character into the stream, and swims in such a day. 



FRIDA Y. 343 

He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve 
of soberness in him. 

I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on 
coarse and succulent pleasures, as cattle on the husks 
and stalks of vegetables. Though there are many 
crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among 
them, run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out 
of shape by adverse circumstances, like the third 
chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some 
heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race 
will fail or waver in them ; like the crabs which grow 
in hedges, they furnish the stocks of sweet and thrifty 
fruits still. Thus is nature recruited from age to age, 
whDe the fair and palatable varieties die out and have 
their period. This is that mankind. How cheap 
must be the material of which so many are made. 

The wind blew steadily down the stream, so that 
we kept our sails set, and lost not a moment of 
the forenoon by delays, but from early morning until 
noon, were continually dropping downward. With 
our hands on the steering paddle, which was thrust 
deep into the river, or bending to the oar, which 
indeed we rarely relinquished, we felt each palpitation 
in the veins of our steed, and each impulse of the 
wings which drew us above. The current of our 
thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, which 
was continually opening new prospects to the east 
or south, but we are aware that rivers flow most 
rapidly and shallowest at these points. The stead- 
fast shores never once turned aside for us, but still 
trended as they were made ; why then should we 
always turn aside for them ? 

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It 



344 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than 
the world demands or can appreciate. These winged 
thoughts are like birds, and will not be handled; 
even hens will not let you touch them like quad- 
rupeds. Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and star- 
tling to a man as his own thoughts. 

To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to 
succumb and conform to the ways of the world. 
Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would float 
upon the breeze of popularity. The bird of paradise 
is obliged constantly to fly against the wind, lest 
its gay trappings, pressing close to its body, may 
impede its free movements. 

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest 
points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of 
the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack 
as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the 
tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, 
there are some harbors which they can never reach. 

The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who re- 
quires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defence, 
but the toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by 
his greater strength and endurance his fainting com- 
panions will recognize the God in him. It is the 
worshippers of beauty, after all, who have done the 
real pioneer work of the world. 

The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his 
faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit 
the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape 
of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and 
heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom 
of a city. 

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their 
fame among the great who have preceded them, and 



I 



FRIDA Y. 345 

all true worldly fame subsides from their high esti- 
mate beyond the stars. 

Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from 
his lyre, but only those which are breathed into it ; 
for the original strain precedes the sound, by as much 
as the echo follows after ; the rest is the perquisite of 
the rocks and trees and beasts. 

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded 
wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere 
accumulated, and not truly cumulative treasure, where 
immortal works stand side by side with antholo- 
gies which did not survive their moth, and cobweb 
and mildew have already spread from these to the 
binding of those ; and happily I am reminded of what 
poetry is, I perceive that Shakspeare and Milton did 
not foresee into what company they were to fall. 
Alas ! that so soon the work of a true poet should be 
swept into such a dust-hole ! 

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will 
remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his 
position, and expect the time when a vision as broad 
shall overlook the same field as freely. 

We are often prompted to speak our thoughts to 
our neighbors, or the single travellers whom we meet 
on the road, but poetry is a communication from our 
home and solitude addressed to all Intelligence. It 
never whispers in a private ear. Knowing this, we 
may understand those sonnets said to be addressed 
to particular persons, or "to a Mistress' Eyebrow." 
Let none feel flattered by them. For poetry write 
love, and it will be equally true. 

No doubt it is an important difference between 
men of genius or poets, and men not of genius, that 
the latter are unable to grasp and confront the thought 



346 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

which visits them. But it is because it is too faint 
for expression, or even conscious impression. What 
merely quickens or retards the blood in their veins 
and fills their afternoons with pleasure they know not 
whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the finer 
organization of the poet. 

We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, and 
the poet could only express what other men con- 
ceived. But in comparison with his task the poet is 
the least talented of any; the writer of prose has 
more skill. See what talent the smith has. His ma- 
terial is pliant in his hands. When the poet is most 
inspired, is stimulated by an aura which never even 
colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent 
is all gone, and he is no longer a poet. The gods do 
not grant him any skill more than another. They 
never put their gifts into his hands, but they encom- 
pass and sustain him with their breath. 

To say that God has given a man many and great 
talents, frequently means, that he has brought his 
heavens down within reach of his hands. 

When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and 
scratch with our pen, intent only on worms, calling our 
mates around us, like the cock, and delighting in the 
dust we make, but do not detect where the jewel lies, 
which, perhaps, we have in the meantime cast to a 
distance, or quite covered up again. 

The poet's body even is not fed simply like other 
men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar 
and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine life. By 
the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his 
life is preserved to a serene old age. 

Some poems are for holidays only. They are pol- 
ished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and 



FRIDA Y. 347 

not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath 
with which the poet utters his verse must be that by 
which he lives. 

Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our 
respect more than great verse, since it implies a more 
permanent and level height, a life more pervaded 
with the grandeur of the thought. The poet often 
only makes an irruption, like a Parthian, and is 
off again, shooting while he retreats ; but the prose 
writer has conquered like a Roman, and settled col- 
onies. 

The true poem is not that which the public read. 
There is always a poem not printed on paper, coinci- 
dent with the production of this, stereotyped in the 
poet's life. It is what he has become through his 
work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on 
canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has 
obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. 
His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery. 

My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
But I could not both live and utter it. 

THE POET'S DELAY. 

In vain I see the morning rise, 
In vain observe the western blaze, 

Who idly look to other skies, 
Expecting life by other ways. 

Amidst such boundless wealth without, 

I only still am poor within, 
The birds have sung their summer out. 

But still my spring does not begin. 

Shall I then wait the autumn wind, 
Compelled to seek a milder day, 



348 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

And leave no curious nest behind, 
No woods still echoing to my lay? 

This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of the 
oaks and pines on shore, reminded us of more north- 
ern dimes than Greece, and more wintry seas than 
the ^gean. 

The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient 
poems which bear his name, though of less fame and 
extent, are, in many respects, of the same stamp with 
the IHad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no 
less than Homer, and in his era we hear of no other 
priest than he. It will not avail to call him a heathen, 
because he personifies the sun and addresses it ; and 
what if his heroes did " worship the ghosts of their 
fathers," their thin, airy, and unsubstantial forms? 
we but worship the ghosts of our fathers in more sub- 
stantial forms. We cannot but respect the vigorous 
faith of those heathen, who sternly believed some- 
what, and we are incHned to say to the critics, who 
are offended by their superstitious rites, — Don't in- 
terrupt these men's prayers. As if we knew more 
about human life and a God, than the heathen and 
ancients. Does English theology contain the recent 
discoveries? 

Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest 
eras, of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the American 
Indian. In his poetry, as in Homer's, only the sim- 
plest and most enduring features of humanity are 
seen, such essential parts of a man as Stonehenge ex- 
hibits of a temple ; we see the circles of stone, and 
the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of life ac- 
quire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through 
his mists. Like all older and grander poetry, it is 



FRIDA v. 349 

distinguished by the few elements in the lives of its 
heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars 
and the earth, shrunk to the bones and sinews. The 
earth is a boundless plain for their deeds. They lead 
such a simple, dry, and everlasting life, as hardly 
needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted en- 
tire from age to age. There are but few objects to 
distract their sight, and their life is as unincumbered 
as the course of the stars they gaze at. — 

" The wrathful kings, on cairns apart, 
Look forward from behind their shields, 
And mark the wandering stars, 
That brilliant westward move." 

It does not cost much for these heroes to live ; they 
do not want much furniture. They are such forms 
of men only as can be seen afar through the mist, 
and have no costume nor dialect, but for language 
there is the tongue itself, and for costume there are 
always the skins of beasts and the bark of trees to 
be had. They live out their years by the vigor of 
their constitutions. They survive storms and the 
spears of their foes, and perform a few heroic deeds, 
and then, 

" Mounds will answer questions of them, 
For many future years." 

Blind and infirm, they spend the remnant of their 
days listening to the lays of the bards, and feeling 
the weapons which laid their enemies low, and when 
at length they die, by a convulsion of nature, the bard 
allows us a short and misty glance into futurity, yet 
as clear, perchance, as their lives had been. When 
Mac-Roine was slain, 



350 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

" His soul departed to his warlike sires, 
To follow misty forms of boars, 
In tempestuous islands bleak." 

The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief 
significant strain, which will suffice for epitaph and 
biography. 

" The weak will find his bow in the dwelling, 
The feeble will attempt to bend it." 

Compared with this simple, fibrous life, our civil- 
ized history appears the chronicle of debility, of fash- 
ion, and the arts of luxury. But the civilized man 
misses no real refinement in the poetry of the rudest 
era. It reminds him that civilization does but dress 
men. It makes shoes, but it does not toughen the 
soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, but 
it does not touch the skin. Inside the civilized man 
stands the savage still in the place of honor. We 
are those blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slen- 
der, dark-haired Normans. 

The profession of the bard attracted more respect 
in those days from the importance attached to fame. 
It was his province to record the deeds of heroes. 
When Ossian hears the traditions of inferior bards, he 
exclaims, — 

" I straightway seize the unfutile tales, 
And send them down in faithful verse." 

His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening of 
the third Duan of Ca-Lodin. 

" Whence have sprung the things that are ? 
And whither roll the passing years ? 
Where does Time conceal its two heads. 



FRIDAY, 351 

In dense impenetrable gloom, 

Its surface marked with heroes' deeds alone ? 

I view the generations gone ; 

The past appears but dim ; 

As objects by the moon's faint beams, 

Reflected from a distant lake. 

I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war, 

But there the unmighty joyless dwell, 

All those who send not down their deeds 

To far, succeeding times." 

The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten ; 

" Strangers come to build a tower. 
And throw their ashes overhand ; 
Some rusted swords appear in dust ; 
One, bending forward, says, 
' The arms belonged to heroes gone ; 
We never heard their praise in song.' " 

The grandeur of the similes is another feature which 
characterizes great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a 
gigantic and universal, language. The images and 
pictures occupy even much space in the landscape, as 
if they could be seen only from the sides of moun- 
tains, and plains with a wide horizon, or across arms 
of the sea. The machinery is so massive that it can- 
not be less than natural. Oivana says to the spirit 
of her father, " Grey-haired Torkil of Torne," seen 
in the skies, 

" Thou glidest away like receding ships." 

So when the hosts of Fingal and Starne approach to 
battle, 

"With murmurs loud, like rivers far. 
The race of Torne hither moved." 



352 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

And when compelled to retire, 

" dragging his spear behind, 

Cudulin sank in the distant wood, 
Like a fire upblazing ere it dies." 

Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he spoke ; 

" A thousand orators incUned 
To hear the lay of Fingal." 

The threats too would have deterred a man. Ven- 
geance and terror were real. Trenmore threatens the 
young warrior whom he meets on a foreign strand, 

"Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore, 
While lessening on the waves she spies 
The sails of him who slew her son." 

If Ossian^s heroes weep, it is from excess of strength, 
and not from weakness, a sacrifice or libation of fer- 
tile natures, like the perspiration of stone in summer's 
heat. We hardly know that tears have been shed, 
and it seems as if weeping were proper only for babes 
and heroes. Their joy and their sorrow are made 
of one stuff, like rain and snow, the rainbow and the 
mist. When Fillan was worsted in fight, and ashamed 
in the presence of Fingal, 

" He strode away forthwith, 
And bent in grief above a stream, 
His cheeks bedewed with tears. 
From time to time the thistles gray 
He lopped with his inverted lance." 

Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of Fingal, 
who comes to aid him in war ; — 



FRIDAY. 353 

" ' My eyes have failed,' says he, ' Crodar is blind, 
Is thy strength like that of thy fathers ? 
Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.' 

I gave my arm to the king. 
The aged hero seized my hand; 
He heaved a heavy sigh ; 
Tears flowed incessant down his cheek. 
' Strong art thou, son of the mighty. 
Though not so dreadful as Morven's prince. * * * 
Let my feast be spread in the hall. 
Let every sweet-voiced minstrel sing ; 
Great is he who is within my wall, 
Sons of wave-echoing Croma.' " 

Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays tribute to 
the superior strength of his father Fingal. 

" How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind. 
Why succeeded Ossian without its strength ? " 



While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with the 
river gurgling under our stern, the thoughts of au- 
tumn coursed as steadily through our minds, and we 
observed less what was passing on the shore, than 
the dateless associations and impressions which the 
season awakened, anticipating in some measure the 
progress of the year. — 

I hearing get, who had but ears. 

And sight, who had but eyes before, 
I moments live, who lived but years. 

And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore. 

Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied 
the landscape by degrees, as one unrolls a map, — rock, 
tree, house, hill, and meadow, assuming new and 
varying positions as wind and water shifted the scene, 
and there was variety enough for our entertainment 



354 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

in the metamorphoses of the simplest objects. Viewed 
from this side the scenery appeared new to us. 

The most familiar sheet of water viewed from a 
new hill-top, yields a novel and unexpected pleasure. 
When we have travelled a few miles, we do not recog- 
nize the profiles even of the hills which overlook our 
native village, and perhaps no man is quite familiar 
with the horizon as seen from the hill nearest to his 
house, and can recall its outline distinctly when in the 
valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a short 
distance, which way the hills range which take in our 
houses and farms in their sweep. As if our birth had 
at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up 
through into nature like a wedge, and not till the 
wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to 
discover where we are, and that nature is one and 
continuous everywhere. It is an important epoch 
when a man who has always lived on the east side of 
a mountain and seen it in the west, travels round and 
sees it in the east. Yet the universe is a sphere whose 
center is wherever there is intelligence. The sun is 
not so central as a man. Upon an isolated hill-top, 
in an open country, we seem to ourselves to be stand- 
ing on the boss of an immense shield, the immediate 
landscape being apparently depressed below the more 
remote, and rising gradually to the horizon, which is 
the rim of the shield, villas, steeples, forests, moun- 
tains, one above another, till they are swallowed up 
in the heavens. The most distant mountains appear 
to rise directly from the shore of that lake in the 
woods by which we chance to be standing, while from 
the mountain top, not only this, but a thousand nearer 
and larger lakes, are equally unobserved. 

Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works of 



FRIDAY. 355 

the farmer, his plowing and reaping, had a beauty to 
our eyes which he never saw. How fortunate were 
we who did not own an acre of these shores, who had 
not renounced our title to the whole. One who knew 
how to appropriate the true value of this world would 
be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he 
has is what he has bought. What I see is mine. I 
am a large owner in the Merrimack intervals. — 

Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend, 
Who yet no partial store appropriate, 

Who no armed ship into the Indies send, 
To rob me of my orient estate. 

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, 
who summer and winter forever can find delight in 
his own thoughts. Buy a farm! What have I to pay 
for a farm which a farmer will take ? 

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am 
glad to find that nature wears so well. The land- 
scape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, 
and I have not put my foot through it yet. There is 
a pleasant tract on the bank of the Concord, called 
Conantum, which I have in my mind ; — the old de- 
serted farm-house, the desolate pasture with its bleak 
cliff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green meadow 
in the midst, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard, 
— places where one may have many thoughts and 
not decide anything. It is a scene which I can 
not only remember, as I might a vision, but when 
I will can bodily revisit, and find it even so, un- 
accountable, yet unpretending in its pleasant dreari- 
ness. When my thoughts are sensible of change, I 
love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and 
pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so 



356 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

established. I not yet gray on rocks forever gray, 
I no longer green under the evergreens. There is 
something even in the lapse of time by which time 
recovers itself. 

As we have said, it proved a cool as well as breezy 
day, and by the time we reached Penichook Brook, 
we were obliged to sit muffled in our cloaks, while the 
wind and current carried us along. We bounded 
swiftly over the rippling surface, far by many culti- 
vated lands and the ends of fences which divided 
innumerable farms, with hardly a thought for the 
various lives which they separated ; now by long rows 
of alders or groves of pines or oaks, and now by some 
homestead where the women and children stood out- 
side to gaze at us, till we had swept out of their sight, 
and beyond the limit of their longest Saturday ram- 
ble. We glided past the mouth of the Nashua, and 
not long after, of Salmon Brook, without more pause 
than the wind. — 

Salmon Brook, 
Penichook, 
Ye sweet waters of my brain, 
When shall I look, 
Or cast the hook, 
In your waves again ? 

Silver eels, 
Wooden creels. 
These the baits that still allure, 
And dragon-fly 
That floated by, — 
May they still endure ? 

The shadows chased one another swiftly over wood 
and meadow, and their alternation harmonized with 
our mood. We could distinguish the clouds w^hich 



FRIDAY. 357 

cast each one, though never so high in the heavens. 
When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul, 
where is the substance? Probably, if we were wise 
enough, we should see to what virtue we are indebted 
for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt we 
have earned it at some time ; for the gifts of Heaven 
are never quite gratuitous. The constant abrasion 
and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future 
growth. The wood which we now mature, when it 
becomes virgin mould, determines the character of 
our second growth, whether that be oaks or pines. 
Every man casts a shadow ; not his body only, but 
his imperfectly mingled spirit; this is his grief; let 
him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the 
sun ; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see 
it? — But, referred to the sun, it is widest at its base, 
which is no greater than his own opacity. The 
divine light is diffused almost entirely around us, 
and by means of the reflection of light, or else by a 
certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it, 
transparency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished, 
we are able to enlighten our shaded side. At any 
rate, our darkest grief has that bronze color of the 
moon eclipsed. There is no ill which may not be 
dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light 
upon it. Shadows, referred to the source of light, are 
pyramids whose bases are never greater than those of 
the substances which cast them, but light is a spheri- 
cal congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the 
sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninter- 
rupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry 
and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow 
wider than themselves. 

The places where we had stopped or spent the 



358 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

night in our way up the river, had already acquired 
a slight historical interest for us ; for many upward 
days' voyaging were unravelled in this rapid down- 
ward passage. When one landed to stretch his limbs 
by walking, he soon found himself falling behind his 
companion, and was obliged to take advantage of the 
curves, and ford the brooks and ravines in haste, to 
recover his ground. Already the banks and the 
distant meadows wore a sober and deepened tinge, 
for the September air had shorn them of their sum- 
mer's pride. — 

" And what 's a life? The flourishing array 
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day 
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay." 

The air was really the " fine element " which the poets 
describe. It had a finer and sharper grain, seen 
against the russet pastures and meadows, than before, 
as if cleansed of the summer's impurities. 

Having passed the New Hampshire line and reached 
the Horseshoe Interval in Tyngsboro', where there 
is a high and regular second bank, we climbed up 
this in haste to get a nearer sight of the autumnal 
flowers, asters, golden-rod, and yarrow, and the tri- 
chostema dichotoma^ humble road-side blossoms, and, 
lingering still, the harebell and the 7-hexia Virgiiiica. 
The last, growing in patches of lively pink flowers on 
the edge of the meadows, had almost too gay an 
appearance for the rest of the landscape, like a joink 
ribbon on the bonnet of a Puritan woman. Asters 
and golden-rods were the livery which nature wore at 
present. The latter alone expressed all the ripeness 
of the season, and shed their mellow lustre over the 
fields, as if the now declining summer's sun had be- 



FRIDAY. 359 

queathed its hues to them. It is the floral solstice a 
little after mid-summer, when the particles of golden 
light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds 
on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On 
every hill-side, and in every valley, stood countless 
asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rods, and the whole 
race of yellow flowers, like Brahminical devotees, 
turning steadily with their luminary from morning till 
night. 

" I see the golden-rod shine bright, 
As sun-showers at the birth of day, 
A golden plume of yellow light. 
That robs the Day-god's splendid ray. 

" The aster's violet rays divide 

The bank with many stars for me, 
And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed. 
As moonlight floats across the sea. 

" I see the emerald woods prepare 
To shed their vestiture once more, 
And distant elm-trees spot the air 
With yellow pictures softly o'er. * * 

" No more the water-lily's pride 

In milk-white circles swims content, 
No more the blue-weed's clusters ride 
And mock the heaven's element. * * 

" Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent 
With the same colors, for to me 
A richer sky than all is lent, 

While fades my dream-like company. 

" Our skies glow purple, but the wind 

Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass, 
To-day shines fair, and lurk behind 
The times that into winter pass. 



36o A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

" So fair we seem, so cold we are, 
So fast we hasten to decay, 
Yet through our night glows many a star. 
That still shall claim its sunny day." 

So sang a Concord poet once. 

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still 
later flowers, which abide with us the approach of 
winter. There is something witch-like in the appear- 
ance of the witch-hazel, which blossoms late in Octo- 
ber and in November, with its irregular and angular 
spray and petals like furies' hair, or small ribbon 
streamers. Its blossoming, too, at this irregular 
period, when other shrubs have lost their leaves, as 
well as blossoms, looks like witches' craft. Certainly 
it blooms in no garden of man's. There is a whole 
fairy-land on the hill-side where it grows. 

Some have thought that the gales do not at present 
waft to the voyager the natural and original fra- 
grance of the land, such as the early navigators 
described, and that the loss of many odoriferous 
native plants, sweet-scented grasses and medicinal 
herbs, which formerly sweetened the atmosphere, and 
rendered it salubrious, by the grazing of cattle and 
the rooting of swine, is the source of many diseases 
which now prevail ; the earth, say they, having been 
long subjected to extremely artificial and luxurious 
modes of cultivation, to gratify the appetite, con- 
verted into a stye and hot-bed, where men for profit 
increase the ordinary decay of nature. 

According to the record of an old inhabitant of 
Tyngsboro', now dead, whose farm we were now glid- 
ing past, one of the greatest freshets on this river 



FRIDAY. 361 

took place in October, 1785, and its height was 
marked by a nail driven into an apple tree behind 
his house. One of his descendants has shown this 
to me, and I judged it to be at least seventeen or 
eighteen feet above the level of the river at the 
time. Before the Lowell and Nashua railroad was 
built, the engineer made inquiries of the inhabitants 
along the banks as to how high they had known the 
river to rise. When he came to this house he was 
conducted to the apple tree, and as the nail was not 
then visible, the lady of the house placed her hand 
on the trunk where she said that she remembered 
the nail to have been from her childhood. In the 
meanwhile the old man put his arm inside the tree, 
which was hollow, and felt the point of the nail 
sticking through, and it was exactly opposite to her 
hand. The spot is now plainly marked by a notch 
in the bark. But as no one else remembered the 
river to have risen so high as this, the engineer disre- 
garded this statement, and I learn that there has 
since been a freshet which rose within nine inches 
of the rails at Biscuit Brook, and such a freshet as 
that of 1785 would have covered the railroad two 
feet deep. 

The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and 
make as interesting revelations, on this river's banks, 
as on the Euphrates or the Nile. This apple tree, 
which stands within a few rods of the river, is called 
" Elisha's apple tree," from a friendly Indian, who 
was anciently in the service of Jonathan Tyng, and, 
with one other man, was killed here by his own 
race in one of the Indian wars, — the particulars of 
which affair were told us on the spot. He was 
buried close by, no one knew exactly where, but 



362 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water 
standing over the grave, caused the earth to settle 
where it had once been disturbed, and when the 
flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the form 
and size of the grave, revealed its locality, but this 
was now lost again, and no future flood can detect 
it; yet, no doubt, Nature will know how to point it 
out in due time, if it be necessary, by methods yet 
more searching and unexpected. Thus there is not 
only the crisis when the spirit ceases to inspire and 
expand the body, marked by a fresh mound in the 
church-yard, but there is also a crisis when the body 
ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a 
fainter depression in the earth. 

We sat awhile to rest us here upon the brink of 
the western bank, surrounded by the glossy leaves 
of the red variety of the mountain laurel, just above 
the head of Wicasuck Island, where we could observe 
some scows which were loading with clay from the 
opposite shore, and also overlook the grounds of 
the farmer, of whom I have spoken, who once hos- 
pitably entertained us for a night. He had on his 
pleasant farm, besides an abundance of the beach - 
plum, or pi-iiniis litto?'alis, w^hich grew wild, the 
Canada plum under cultivation, fine Porter apples, 
some peaches, and large patches of musk and water 
melons, which he cultivated for the Lowell market. 
Elisha's apple tree, too, bore a native fruit, which 
was prized by the family. He raised the blood peach, 
which, as he showed us with satisfaction, was more 
like the oak in the color of its bark and in the setting 
of its branches, and was less liable to break down 
under the weight of the fmit, or the snow, than 
other varieties. It was of slower growth, and its 



FRIDA V. 363 

branches strong and tough. There, also, was his 
nursery of native apple trees, thickly set upon the 
bank, which cost but little care, and which he sold 
to the neighboring farmers when they were five or 
six years old. To see a single peach upon its stem 
makes an impression of paradisaical fertility and 
luxury. This reminded us even of an old Roman 
farm, as described by Varro : " Cssar Vopiscus 
yEdilicius, when he pleaded before the Censors, said 
that the grounds of Rosea were the garden {siuneii 
the tid-bit) of Italy, in which a pole being left 
would not be visible the day after, on account of 
the growth of the herbage." This soil may not 
have been remarkably fertile, yet at this distance 
we thought that this anecdote might be told of the 
Tyngsboro' farm. 

When we passed Wicasuck Island, there was a 
pleasure boat containing a youth and a maiden on the 
island brook, which we were pleased to see, since it 
proved that there were some hereabouts to whom our 
excursions would not be wholly strange. Before this, 
a canal-boatman, of whom we made some inquiries 
respecting Wicasuck Island, and who told us that 
it was disputed property, supposed that we had a 
claim upon it, and though we assured him that all 
this was news to us, and explained, as well as we 
could, why we had come to see it, he believed not 
a word of it, and seriously offered us one hundred 
dollars for our title. The only other small boats 
which we met with were used to pick up drift- 
wood. Some of the poorer class along the stream 
collect, in this way, all the fuel which they require. 
While one of us landed not far from this island to 
forage for provisions among the farm-houses whose 



364 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

roofs we saw, for our supply was now exhausted, the 
other, sitting in the boat, which was moored to the 
shore, was left alone to his reflections. 

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the trav- 
eller always has a resource in the skies. They are 
constantly turning a new page to view. The wind 
sets the types on this blue ground, and the in- 
quiring may always read a new truth there. There 
are things there written with such fine and subtil 
tinctures, paler than the juice of limes, that to the 
diurnal eye they leave no trace, and only the chem- 
istry of night reveals them. Every man's daylight 
firmament answers in his mind to the brightness of 
the vision in his starriest hour. 

These continents and hemispheres are soon run 
over, but an always unexplored and infinite region 
makes off on every side from the mind, further than 
to sunset, and we can make no highway or beaten 
track into it, but the grass immediately springs up in 
the path, for we travel there chiefly with our wings. 

Sometimes we see objects as through a thin haze, 
in their eternal relations, and they stand like Palen- 
que and the Pyramids, and we wonder who set them 
up, and for what purpose. If we see the reality in 
things, of what moment is the superficial and ap- 
parent longer? What are the earth and all its in- 
terests beside the deep surmise which pierces and 
scatters them? While I sit here listening to the 
waves which ripple and break on this shore, I am 
absolved from all obligation to the past, and the 
council of nations may reconsider its votes. The 
grating of a pebble annuls them. Still occasionally 
in my dreams I remember that rippling water. — 



FRIDA Y. 365 

Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o'er, 
I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore, 
Distinct as if it were at broad noon-day, 
And I were drifting down from Nashua. 

With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngs- 
boro' and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand 
half of a tart country apple-pie which we had pur- 
chased to celebrate our return, and in the other a 
fragment of the newspaper in which it was wrapped, 
devouring these with divided relish, and learning the 
news which had transpired since we sailed. The 
river here opened into a broad and straight reach of 
great length, which we bounded merrily over before 
a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our 
faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and 
a speed which greatly astonished some scow boatmen 
whom we met. The wind in the horizon rolled 
like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent 
to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys 
turned their cheeks to it. They were great and cur- 
rent motions, the flowing sail, the running stream, the 
waving tree, the roving wind. The north wind 
stepped readily into the harness which we had pro- 
vided, and pulled us along with good will. Some- 
times we sailed as gently and steadily as the clouds 
overhead, watching the receding shores and the 
motions of our sail ; the play of its pulse so like our 
own lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless 
when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient 
when least effective ; now bending to some generous 
impulse of the breeze, and then fluttering and flapping 
with a kind of human suspense. It was the scale 
on which the varying temperature of distant atmos- 
pheres w^as graduated, and it was some attraction 



366 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

for us that the breeze, it played with had been out 
of doors so long. Thus we sailed, not being able to 
fly, but as next best, making a long furrow in the 
fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with our 
wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the 
watery trench ; gracefully plowing homeward with our 
brisk and willing team, wind and stream, pulling 
together, the former yet a wild steer, yoked to his 
more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when 
the duck rushes through the water with an impulse of 
her wings, throwing the spray about her, before she 
can rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up but 
a few feet on the shore! 

When we reached the great bend just above Mid- 
dlesex, where the river runs east thirty-five miles to 
the sea, we at length lost the aid of this propitious 
wind, though we contrived to make one long and 
judicious tack carry us nearly to the locks of the 
canal. We were here locked through at noon by our 
old friend, the lover of the higher mathematics, who 
seemed glad to see us safe back again through so 
many locks ; but we did not stop to consider any 
of his problems, though we could cheerfully have 
spent a whole autumn in this way another time, and 
never have asked what his religion was. It is so rare 
to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy 
thought in his mind, which is independent of the 
labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness 
there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and 
industry, as witliin the reef encircling a coral isle 
there is always an expanse of still water, where the 
depositions are going on which will finally raise it 
above the surface. 



FRIDAY. 367 

The eye which can appreciate the naked and abso- 
lute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than 
that which is attracted by a moral one. Few detect 
the morality in the former, or the science in the latter. 
Aristotle defined art to be Aoyos tov epyov ai/ev vA>/s 
the principle of the zuork without the wood; but most 
men prefer to have some of the wood along with the 
principle ; they demand that the truth be clothed in 
flesh and blood and the warm colors of life. They 
prefer the partial statement because it fits and meas- 
ures them and their commodities best. But science 
still exists everywhere as the sealer of weights and 
measures at least. 

We have heard much about the poetry of mathe- 
matics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The 
ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than 
we. Tlie most distinct and beautiful statement of 
any truth must take at last the mathematical form. 
We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, 
as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would ex- 
press them both. All the moral laws are readily 
translated into natural philosophy, for often we have 
only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by 
which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal 
instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already 
siiper7iatiiral philosophy. The whole body of what 
is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the 
golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we 
may say that the laws of Nature are the purest moral- 
ity. The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge 
of good and evil. He is not a true man of science 
who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, 
and expect to learn something by behavior as well as 
by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery 



368 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous 
laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle 
exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger sys- 
tem than the starry one. Mathematics should be 
mixed not only with physics but with ethics, that is 
mixed m^ih^rmXics. The fact which interests us most 
is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is 
still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate 
science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral 
life of its devotee, and he professes another religion 
than it teaches, and worships at a foreign shrine. 
Anciently the faith of a philosopher was identical 
with his system, or, in other words, his view of the 
universe. 

My friends mistake when they communicate facts 
to me with so much pains. Their presence, even 
their exaggerations and loose statements, are equally 
good facts for me. I have no respect for facts even 
except when I would use them, and for the most part 
I am independent of those which I hear, and can 
afford to be inaccurate, or, in other words, to sub- 
stitute more present and pressing facts in their 
place. 

The poet uses the results of science and philosoph)', 
and generalizes their widest deductions. 

The process of discovery is very simple. An un- 
wearied and systematic application of known laws to 
nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. 
Almost any mode of observation will be successful 
at last, for what is most wanted is method. Only let 
something be determined and fixed around which ob- 
servation may rally. How many new relations a foot- 
rule alone will reveal, and to how many things still 
this has not been applied ! What wonderful discover- 



FRIDA Y. 369 

ies have been, and may still be, made, with a plumb- 
line, a level, a surveyor's compass, a thermometer, or 
a barometer! Where there is an observatory and a 
telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds 
at once. I should say that the most prominent 
scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, 
are either serving the arts, and not pure science, or 
are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors 
in particular departments. They make no steady and 
systematic approaches to the central fact. A dis- 
covery is made, and at once the attention of all ob- 
servers is distracted to that, and it draws many analo- 
gous discoveries in its train ; as if their work \vere 
not already laid out for them, but they had been lying 
on their oars. There is wanting constant and accurate 
observation with enough of theory to direct and disci- 
pline it. 

But above all, there is wanting genius. Our books 
of science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger 
of losing the freshness and vigor and readiness to 
appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked 
merit in the oft-times false theories of the ancients. 
I am attracted by the slight pride and satisfaction, 
the emphatic and even exaggerated style in which 
some of the older naturalists speak of the opera- 
tions of Nature, though they are better qualified to 
appreciate than to discriminate the facts. Their 
assertions are not without value when disproved. If 
they are not facts, they are suggestions for Nature 
herself to act upon. " The Greeks," says Gesner, 
" had a common proverb (Aayos koB^v^ov) a sleeping 
hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit ; because the 
hare sees when she sleeps ; for this is an admirable 
and rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her 



370 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

bodily parts take their rest, but the eye standeth 
continually sentinel." 

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being 
so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, 
that it appears as if the theorizer would always be 
in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at im- 
perfect conclusions ; but the power to perceive a law 
is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends 
but little on the number of facts observed. The 
senses of the savage will furnish him with facts 
enough to set him up as a philosoplier. The an- 
cients can still speak to us with authority even on the 
themes of geology and chemistry, though these studies 
are thought to have had their birth in modern times. 
Much is said about the progress of science in these 
centuries. I should say that the useful results of 
science had accumulated, but that there had been no 
accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for 
posterity ; for knowledge is to be acquired only by a 
corresponding experience. How can we kjiow what 
we are told merely ? Each man can interpret another's 
experience only by his own. We read that Newton 
discovered the law of gravitation, but how many who 
have heard of his famous discovery have recognized 
the same truth that he did ? It may be not one. 
The revelation which was then made to him has not 
been superseded by the revelation made to any suc- 
cessor. — 

We see \\\e planet fall, 

And that is all. 

In a review of Sir James Clark Ross' Antarctic Voy- 
age of Discovery, there is a passage which shows how 
far a body of men are commonly impressed by an 



I 



FRIDA Y. 371 

object of sublimity, and which is also a good instance 
of the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. After 
describing the discovery of the Antarctic Continent, 
at first seen a hundred miles distant over fields of 
ice, — stupendous ranges of mountains from seven 
and eight to twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, 
covered with eternal snow and ice, in solitary and 
inaccessible grandeur, at one time the weather being 
beautifully clear, and the sun shining on the icy land- 
scape ; a continent whose islands only are accessible, 
and these exhibited " not the smallest trace of vegeta- 
tion," only in a few places the rocks protruding through 
their icy covering, to convince the beholder that land 
formed the nucleus, and that it was not an iceberg ; — 
the practical British reviewer proceeds thus, sticking 
to his last, " On the 22d of January, afternoon, the 
Expedition made the latitude of 74° 20', and by f" 
P.M., having ground to believe that they were then 
in a higher southern latitude than had been attained 
by that enterprising seaman, the late Captain James 
Weddel, and therefore higher than all their predeces- 
sors, an extra allowance of grog was issued to the 
crews as a reward for their perseverance." 

Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon our- 
selves any airs on account of our Newtons and our 
Cuviers. We deserve an extra allowance of grog 
only. 

We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind to 
blow through the long corridor of the canal, which 
is here cut straight through the woods, and were 
obliged to resort to our old expedient of drawing by 
a cord. When we reached the Concord, we were 
forced to row once more in good earnest, with neither 



372 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

wind nor current in our favor, but by this time the 
rawness of the day had disappeared, and we expe- 
rienced the warmth of a summer afternoon. This 
change in the weather was favorable to our con- 
templative mood, and disposed us to dream yet 
deeper at our oars, while we floated in imagination 
further down the stream of time, as we had floated 
down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of a 
milder period than had engaged us in the morning. 
Chelmsford and Billerica appeared like old English 
towns, compared with Merrimack and Nashua, and 
many generations of civil poets might have lived and 
sung here. 

What a contrast between the stern and desolate 
poetry of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of 
Shakspeare and Milton, much more of Dryden, and 
Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry, like 
the Greek and Latin before it, seems well advanced 
toward its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage 
of the season, with bright autumnal tints, but soon 
the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shad- 
ing leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous 
boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in 
the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impres- 
sion that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, 
when we come to the literature of civilized eras. Now 
first we hear of various ages and styles of poetry ; it 
is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative, and didactic ; but 
the poetry of runic monuments is of one style, and 
for every age. The bard has in a great measure lost 
the dignity and sacredness of his office. Formerly 
he was called a seer, but now it is thought that one 
man sees as much as another. He has no longer the 



FRIDAY, 373 

bardic rage, and only conceives the deed, which he 
formerly stood ready to perform. Hosts of warriors 
earnest for battle could not mistake nor dispense with 
the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the pauses 
of the fight. There was no danger of his being over- 
looked by his contemporaries. But now the hero and 
the bard are of different professions. When we come 
to the pleasant English verse, the storms have all 
cleared away, and it will never thunder and lighten 
more. The poet has come within doors, and ex- 
changed the forest and crag for the fireside, the 
hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge with its circles of 
stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero 
stands at the door prepared to break forth into song 
or heroic action, but a homely Englishman, who culti- 
vates the art of poetry. We see the comfortable fire- 
side, and hear the crackling fagots in all the verse. 

Notwithstanding the broad humanity of Chaucer, 
and the many social and domestic comforts which we 
meet with in his verse, we have to narrow our vision 
somewhat to consider him, as if he occupied less 
space in the landscape, and did not stretch over hill 
and valley as Ossian does. Yet, seen from the side 
of posterity, as the father of English poetry, preceded 
by a long silence or confusion in history, unenlivened 
by any strain of pure melody, we easily come to rever- 
ence him. Passing over the earlier continental poets, 
since we are bound to the pleasant archipelago of 
English poetry, Chaucer's is the first name after that 
misty weather in which Ossian lived, which can detain 
us long. Indeed, though he represents so different a 
culture and society, he may be regarded as in many 
respects the Homer of the English poets. Perhaps 
he is the youthfuUest of them all. We return to him 



374 ^ ^^EK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

as to the purest well, the fountain furthest removed 
from the highway of desultory life. He is so natural 
and cheerful, compared with later jDoets, that we might 
almost regard him as a personification of spring. To 
the faithful reader his muse has even given an aspect 
to his times, and when he is fresh from perusing him, 
they seem related to the golden age. It is still the 
poetry of youth and life, rather than of thought ; and 
though the moral vein is obvious and constant, it has 
not yet banished the sun and daylight from his verse. 
The loftiest strains of the muse are, for the most part, 
sublimely plaintive, and not a carol as free as nature's. 
The content which the sun shines to celebrate from 
morning to evening, is unsung. The muse solaces 
herself, and is not ravished but consoled. There is 
a catastrophe implied, and a tragic element in all our 
verse, and less of the lark and morning devv's, than of 
the nightingale and evening shades. But in Homer 
and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and seren- 
ity of youth, than in the more modern and moral poets. 
The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and 
men cling to this old song, because they still have 
moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which 
give them an appetite for more. To the innocent 
there are neither cherubim nor angels. At rare in- 
tervals we rise above the necessity of virtue into an 
unchangeable morning light, in which we have only 
to live right on and breathe the ambrosial air. The 
Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it 
with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as 
if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones 
of the soil. 

Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary man 
and a scholar. There were never any times so stirring 



FRIDAY, 375 

that there were not to be found some sedentary still. 
He was surrounded by the din of arms. The battles 
of Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross, and the still 
more memorable battles of Cressy and Poictiers, were 
fought in his youth ; but these did not concern our 
poet much, Wickliffe and his reform much more. 
He regarded himself always as one privileged to sit 
and converse with books. He helped to establish 
the literary class. His character as one of the fathers 
of the English language, would alone make his works 
important, even those which have little poetical merit. 
He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his 
homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was 
neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to 
the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar ser- 
vice to his country to that which Dante rendered to 
Italy. If Greek sufificeth for Greek, and Arabic for 
Arabian, and Hebrew for Jew, and Latin for Latin, 
then English shall suffice for him, for any of these 
will serve to teach truth " right as divers pathes leaden 
divers folke the right waye to Rome." In the Testa- 
ment of Love he writes, " Let then clerkes enditen in 
Latin, for they have the propertie of science, and the 
knowinge in that facultie, and lette Frenchmen in 
their Frenche also enditen their queinte termes, for 
it is kyndely to their mouthes, and let us shewe our 
fantasies in soche wordes as we lerneden of our dames 
tonge." 

He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, who 
has come down to him the natural way, through the 
meagre pastures of Saxon and ante-Chaucerian poe- 
try ; and yet, so human and wise he appears after 
such diet, that we are liable to misjudge him still. In 
the Saxon poetry extant, in the earliest English, and 



376 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

the contemporary Scottish poetry, there is less to 
remind the reader of the rudeness and vigor of youth, 
than of the feebleness of a declining age. It is for 
the most part translation or imitation merely, with 
only an occasional and slight tinge of poetry, often- 
times the falsehood and exaggeration of fable, without 
its imagination to redeem it, and we look in vain to 
find antiquity restored, humanized, and made blithe 
again by some natural sympathy between it and the 
present. But Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and 
no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along 
the line, and we are reminded that flowers have 
bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten, in 
England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the 
rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the orig- 
inal green life is revealed. He was a homely and do- 
mestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do. 
There is no wisdom that can take place of human- 
ity, and we find that in Chaucer. We can expand at 
last in his breath, and we think that we could have 
been that man's acquaintance. He was worthy to 
be a citizen of England, while Petrarch and Boccaccio 
lived in Italy, and Tell and Tamerlane in Switzer- 
land and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and Wick- 
liffe, and Gower, and Edward the Tliird, and John of 
Gaunt, and the Black Prince, were his own country- 
men as well as contemporaries ; all stout and stirring 
names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down from 
the preceding century, and the name of Dante still 
possessed the influence of a living presence. On the 
whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his repu- 
tation, and not a little like Homer and Shakspeare, 
for he would have held up his head in their company. 
Among early English poets he is the landlord and 



FRIDA Y. 377 

host, and has the authority of such. The affectionate 
mention which succeeding early poets make of him, 
coupling him with Homer and Virgil, is to be taken 
into the account in estimating his character and influ- 
ence. King James and Dunbar of Scotland speak of 
him with more love and reverence than any modern 
author of his predecessors of the last century. The 
same childlike relation is without a parallel now. For 
the most part we read him without criticism, for he 
does not plead his own cause, but speaks for his 
readers, and has that greatness of trust and reliance 
which compels popularity. He confides in the reader, 
and speaks privily with him, keeping nothing back. 
And in return the reader has great confidence in him, 
that he tells no lies, and reads his story with indul- 
gence, as if it were the circumlocution of a child, but 
often discovers afterwards that he has spoken with 
more directness and economy of words than a sage. 
He is never heartless, 

" For first the thing is thought within the hart, 
Er any word out from the mouth astart." 

And so new was all his theme in those days, that he 
did not have to invent, but only to tell. 

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit. 
The easy height he speaks from in his Prologue to 
the Canterbury Tales, as if he were equal to any of 
the company there assembled, is as good as any par- 
ticular excellence in it. But though it is full of good 
sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry. 
For picturesque descriptions of persons it is, perhaps, 
without a parallel in English poetry ; yet it is essen- 
tially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. Hu- 
mor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view 



3/8 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

than enthusiasm. To his own finer vein he added all 
the common wit and wisdom of his time, and every- 
where in his works his remarkable knowledge of the 
world and nice perception of character, his rare com- 
mon sense and proverbial wisdom, are apparent. His 
genius does not soar like Milton's, but is genial and 
familiar. It shows great tenderness and delicacy, but 
not the heroic sentiment. It is only a greater portion 
of humanity with all its weakness. He is not heroic, 
as Raleigh, nor pious, as Herbert, nor philosophical, 
as Shakspeare, but he is the child of the English 
muse, that child which is the father of the man. The 
charm of his poetry consists often only in an exceed- 
ing naturalness, perfect sincerity, with the behavior 
of a child rather than of a man. 

Gentleness and delicacy of character are every- 
where apparent in his verse. The simplest and 
humblest words come readily to his lips. No one 
can read the Prioress' tale, understanding the spirit 
in which it was written, and in which the child sings 
O alma j-edouptoris jnater, or the account of the de- 
parture of Constance with her child upon the sea, in 
the Man of Lawe's tale, without feeling the native 
innocence and refinement of the author. Nor can we 
be mistaken respecting the essential purity of his 
character, disregarding the apology of the manners of 
the age. A simple pathos and feminine gentleness, 
which Wordsworth only occasionally approaches, but 
does not equal, are peculiar to him. We are tempted 
to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. 
It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find 
in woman, though not the appreciation of it ; perhaps 
it is not to be found at all in woman, but is only the 
feminine in man. 



FRIDAY. 379 

Such pure, and genuine, and childlike love of Na- 
ture is hardly to be found in any poet. 

Chaucer's remarkably trustful and affectionate char- 
acter appears in his familiar, yet innocent and rever- 
ent, manner of speaking of his God. He comes into 
his thought v^ithout any false reverence, and with no 
more parade than the zephyr to his ear. If Nature is 
our mother, then God is our father. There is less 
love and simple practical trust in Shakspeare and 
Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we 
find expressed any affection for God. Certainly, there 
is no sentiment so rare as the love of God. Herbert 
almost alone expresses it, " Ah, my dear God ! " Our 
poet uses similar words with propriety, and whenever 
he sees a beautiful person, or other object, prides 
himself on the " maistry " of his God. He even rec- 
ommends Dido to be his bride, — 

" if that God that heaven and yearth made, 

Would have a love for beauty and goodnesse, 
And womanhede, trouth, and semeliness." 

But in justification of our praise, we must refer to 
his works themselves ; to the Prologue to the Canter- 
bury Tales, the account of Gentilesse, the Flower and 
the Leaf, the stories of Griselda, Virginia, Ariadne, 
and Blanche the Dutchesse, and much more of less dis- 
tinguished merit. There are many poets of more taste 
and better manners, who knew how to leave out their 
dulness, but such negative genius cannot detain us 
long ; we shall return to Chaucer still with love. 
Some natures which are really rude and ill developed, 
have yet a higher standard of perfection than others 
which are refined and well balanced. Even the clown 
has taste, whose dictates, though he disregards them, 



380 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

are higher and purer than those which the artist 
obeys. If we have to wander through many dull and 
prosaic passages in Chaucer, we have at least the satis- 
faction of knowing that it is not an artificial dulness, 
but too easily matched by many passages in life. We 
confess that we feel a disposition commonly to concen- 
trate sweets, and accumulate pleasures, but the poet 
may be presumed always to speak as a traveller, who 
leads us through a varied scenery, from one eminence 
to another, and it is, perhaps, more pleasing, after all, 
to meet with a fine thought in its natural setting. 
Surely fate has enshrined it in these circumstances for 
some end. Nature strews her nuts and flowers broad- 
cast, and never collects them into heaps. This was 
the soil it grew in, and this the hour it bloomed in ; 
if sun, wind, and rain came here to cherish and 
expand the flower, shall not we come here to pluck 
it? 

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a 
felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as 
by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have 
beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form 
and bearing of a stranger, but true verses come toward 
us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, 
and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance. Much 
of our poetry has the very best manners, but no char- 
acter. It is only an unusual precision and elasticity 
of speech, as if its author had taken, not an intoxicat- 
ing draught, but an electuary. It has the distinct 
outHne of sculpture, and chronicles an early hour. 
Under the influence of passion all men speak thus 
distinctly, but wrath is not always divine. 

There are two classes of men called poets. The one 
cultivates life, the other art, — one seeks food for nu- 



FRIDAY. 381 

triment, the other for flavor ; one satisfies hunger, the 
other gratifies the palate. There are two kinds of 
writing, both great and rare ; one that of genius, or 
the inspired, the other of intellect and taste, in the 
intervals of inspiration. The former is above criti- 
cism, always correct, giving the law to criticism. It 
vibrates and pulsates with life forever. It is sacred, 
and to be read with reverence, as the works of nature 
are studied. There are few instances of a sustained 
style of this kind ; perhaps every man has spoken 
words, but the speaker is then careless of the record. 
Such a style removes us out of personal relations with 
its author, we do not take his words on our lips, but 
his sense into our hearts. It is the stream of inspira- 
tion, which bubbles out, now here, now there, now in 
this man, now in that. It matters not through what 
ice-crystals it is seen, now a fountain, now the ocean 
stream nmning under ground. It is in Shakspeare, 
Alpheus, in Burns, Arethuse ; but ever the same. — 
The other is self-possessed and wise. It is reverent 
of genius, and greedy of inspiration. It is conscious 
in the highest and the least degree. It consists with 
the most perfect command of the faculties. It dwells 
in a repose as of the desert, and objects are as distinct 
in it as oases or palms in the horizon of sand. The 
train of thought moves with subdued and measured 
step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instru- 
ment in its hand, and not instinct with life, like a 
longer arm. It leaves a thin varnish or glaze over all 
its work. The works of Goethe furnish remarkable 
instances of the latter. 

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. Noth- 
ing is considered simply as it lies in the lap of eternal 
beauty, but our thoughts, as well as our bodies, must 



382 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

be dressed after the latest fashions. Our taste is too 
delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's 
work, but never yea to his hope. It invites him to 
adorn his deformities, and not to cast them off by ex- 
pansion, as the tree its bark. We are a people who 
live in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain, 
and drink only light wines, whose teeth are easily set 
on edge by the least natural sour. If we had been 
consulted, the backbone of the earth would have been 
made, not of granite, but of Bristol spar. A modern 
author would have died in infancy in a ruder age. 
But the poet is something more than a scald, " a 
smoother and polisher of language ; " he is a Cincin- 
natus in literature, and occupies no west end of the 
world. Like the sun, he will indifferently select his 
rhymes, and with a liberal taste weave into his verse 
the planet and the stubble. 

In these old books the stucco has long since crum- 
bled away, and we read what was sculptured in the 
granite. They are rude and massive in their propor- 
tions, rather than smooth and delicate in their finish. 
The workers in stone polish only their chimney orna- 
ments, but their pyramids are roughly done. There 
is a soberness in a rough aspect, as of unhewn gran- 
ite, which addresses a depth in us, but a polished sur- 
face hits only the ball of the eye. The true finish is 
the work of time and the use to which a thing is put. 
The elements are still polishing the pyramids. Art 
may varnish and gild, but it can do no more. A work 
of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anti- 
cipates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish, 
which still appears when fragments are broken off, an 
essential quality of its substance. Its beauty is at the 
same time its strength, and it breaks with a lustre. 



FRIDAY. 383 

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness 
as well as its essence. The reader easily goes within 
the shallowest contemporary poetry, and informs it 
with all the life and promise of the day, as the 
pilgrim goes within the temple, and hears the faintest 
strains of the worshippers ; but it will have to speak to 
posterity, traversing these deserts, through the ruins 
of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and beauty of 
its proportions. 

But here on the stream of the Concord, where we 
have all the while been bodily, Nature, who is superior 
to all styles and ages, is now, with pensive face, com- 
posing her poem Autumn, with which no work of man 
will bear to be compared. 

In summer we live out of doors, and have only im- 
pulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must 
wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of 
autumn and wholly new life, which no man has lived ; 
that even this earth was made for more mysterious 
and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the 
hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other 
mansions than those which we occupy, not far off 
geographically. — 

" There is a place beyond that flaming hill, 

From whence the stars their thin appearance shed, 
A place beyond all place, where never ill. 
Nor impure thought was ever harbored." 

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not his 
Father but his Mother stirs within him, and he be- 
comes immortal with her immortality. From time to 
time she claims kindredship with us, and some globule 
from her veins steals up into our own. 



384 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

I am the autumnal sun, 
With autumn gales my race is run ; 
When will the hazel put forth its flowers, 
Or the grape ripen under my bowers ? 
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon, 
Turn my midnight into mid-noon ? 

I am all sere and yellow, 

And to my core mellow. 
The mast is dropping within my woods. 
The winter is lurking within my moods, 
And the rustling of the withered leaf 
Is the constant music of my grief. 

To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke in 
prose : — 

The moon no longer reflects the day, but rises to 
her absolute rule, and the husbandman and hunter ac- 
knowledge her for their mistress. Asters and golden- 
rods reign along the way, and the life-ever-lasting 
withers not. The fields are reaped and shorn of their 
pride, but an inward verdure still crowns them. The 
thistle scatters its down on the pool, and yellow leaves 
clothe the vine, and naught disturbs the serious life 
of men. But behind the sheaves, and under the 
sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers have 
not gathered, the true harvest of the year, which it 
bears for ever, annually watering and maturing it, and 
man never severs the stalk which bears this palatable 
fruit. 

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, 
round which the vine clings, and which the elm will- 
ingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, 
and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. 
He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalised, 
on the soil of earth. Who shall conceive what kind 



FRIDAY. 385 

of roof the heavens might extend over him, what sea- 
sons minister to him, and what employment dignify 
his life! Only the convalescent raise the veil of 
nature. An immortality in his life would confer 
immortality on his abode. The winds should be his 
breath, the seasons his moods, and he should impart 
of his serenity to Nature herself. But such as we 
know him he is ephemeral like the scenery that sur- 
rounds him, and does not aspire to an enduring exist- 
ence. When we come down into the distant village, 
visible from the mountain top, the nobler inhabitants 
with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only 
vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination 
of poets which puts those brave speeches into the 
mouths of their heroes. They may feign that Cato's 
last words were 

"The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all 
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars ; 
And now will view the Gods' state and the stars," 

but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny of 
common men. What is this heaven which they ex- 
pect, if it is no better than they expect? Are they 
prepared for a better than they can now imagine? 
Here or nowhere is our heaven. — 

" Although we see celestial bodies move 
Above the earth, the earth we till and love." 

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something 
which we have experienced. " The remembrance of 
youth is a sigh." We linger in manhood to tell the 
dreams of our childhood, and they are half forgotten 
ere we have learned the language. We have need to 
be earth-born as well as heaven-born, yr^yej/ets, as was 



386 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than 
they. There have been heroes for whom this world 
seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at last 
succeeded; whose daily life was the stuff of which 
our dreams are made, and whose presence enhanced 
the beauty and ampleness of Nature herself. Where 
they walked, 

" Largior hie campos aether at lumine vestit 
Purpureo : Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt." 

"Here a more copious air invests the fields, and 
clothes with purple light ; and they know their own 
sun and their own stars." We love to hear some men 
speak, though we hear not what they say ; the very 
air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound 
of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of 
leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many 
deep. They have the heavens for their abettors, as 
those who have never stood from under them, and 
they look at the stars with an answering ray. Their 
eyes are like glow-worms, and their motions graceful 
and flowing, as if a place were already found for them, 
like rivers flowing through valleys. The distinctions 
of morality, of right and wrong, sense and nonsense, 
are petty, and have lost their significance, beside 
these pure primeval natures. When I consider the 
clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, 
frowning with darkness, or glowing with downy light, 
or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, like the 
battlements of a city in the heavens, their grandeur 
appears thrown away on the meanness of my employ- 
ment ; the drapery is altogether too rich for such 
poor acting. I am hardly worthy to be a suburban 
dweller outside those walls. 



FRIDAY. 387 

"Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 

With our music we would fain challenge transiently 
another and finer sort of intercourse than our daily 
toil permits. The strains come back to us amended 
in the echo, as when a friend reads our verse. Why 
have they so painted the fruits, and freighted them 
with such fragrance as to satisfy a more than animal 
appetite? 

" I asked the schoolman, his advice was firee, 
But scored me out too intricate a way." 

These things imply, perchance, that we live on the 
verge of another and purer realm, from which these 
odors and sounds are wafted over to us. The borders 
of our plot are set with flowers, whose seeds were 
blown from more Elysian fields adjacent. They are 
the pot-herbs of the gods. Some fairer fruits and 
sweeter fragrances wafted over to us, betray another 
realm's vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, and 
there is the abutment of the rainbow's arch. 

A finer race and finer fed 
Feast and revel o'er our head, 
And we titmen are only able 
To catch the fragments from their table. 
Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits. 
While we consume the pulp and roots. 
What are the moments that we stand 
Astonished on the Olympian land ! 

We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure 
senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our pres- 
ent senses are but the rudiments of what they are 
destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and 
dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling. 
Every generation makes the discovery, that its divine 



388 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

vigor has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty 
misapplied and debauched. The ears were made, 
not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, 
but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not 
made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to 
and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. 
May we not see God? Are we to be put off and 
amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? 
Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is com- 
monly taken to be the symbol merely? When the 
common man looks into the sky, which he has not 
so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the 
earth, and with reverence speaks of " the Heavens," 
but the seer will in the same sense speak of "the 
Earths," and his Father who is in them. " Did not 
he that made that which is within., make that which 
is ivithoid also ? " What is it, then, to educate but to 
develop these divine germs called the senses? for 
individuals and states to deal magnanimously with 
the rising generation, leading it not into temptation, 

— not teach the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to 
profanity? But where is the instructed teacher? 
Where are the 7iormal schools? 

A Hindoo sage said, " As a dancer having exhibited 
herself to the spectator, desists from the dance, so 
does Nature desist, having manifested herself to soul. 

— Nothing, in my opinion, is more gentle than 
Nature ; once aware of having been seen, she does 
not again expose herself to the gaze of soul." 

It is easier to discover another such a new world as 
Columbus did, than to go within one fold of this which 
we appear to know so well ; the land is lost sight of, 
the compass varies, and mankind mutiny; and still 



FRIDAY. 389 

history accumulates like rubbish before the portals of 
nature. But there is only necessary a moment's sanity 
and sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature 
behind the ordinary, in which we have only some 
vague preemption right and western reserve as yet. 
We live on the outskirts of that region. Carved wood, 
and floating boughs, and sunset skies, are all that we 
know of it. We are not to be imposed on by the 
longest spell of weather. Let us not, my friends, be 
wheedled and cheated into good behavior to earn the 
salt of our eternal porridge, whoever they are that 
attempt it. Let us wait a little, and not purchase any 
clearing here, trusting that richer bottoms will soon 
be put up. It is but thin soil where we stand ; I have 
felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a bunch 
of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a straw, 
which reminded me of myself. — 

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 

A bunch of violets without their roots, 
And sorrel intermixed. 
Encircled by a wisp of straw 
Once coiled about their shoots, 
The law 
By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay which Time clutched from out 
Those fair Elysian fields. 
With weeds and broken stems, in haste, 
Doth make the rabble rout 
That waste 
The day he yields. 



390 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER, 

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, 
Drinking my juices up, 
With no root in the land 
To keep my branches green, 
But stand 
In a bare cup. 

Some tender buds were left upon my stem 
In mimicry of life, 
But ah ! the children will not know. 
Till time has withered them, 
The wo 
With which they 're rife. 

But now I see I was not plucked for naught, 
And after in' life's vase 
Of glass set while I might survive, 
But by a kind hand brought 
Alive 
To a strange place. 

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, 
And by another year, 
Such as God knows, with freer air, 
More fruits and fairer flowers 
Will bear. 
While I droop here. 

This world has many rings^ like Saturn, and we 
live now on the outmost of them all. None can say 
deliberately that he inhabits the same sphere, or is 
contemporary with, the flower which his hands have 
plucked, and though his feet may seem to crush it, 
inconceivable spaces and ages separate them, and 
perchance there is no danger that he will hurt it. 
What after all do the botanists know? Our lives 
should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye 
may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are 



1 



FRIDAY. 391 

still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of 
sea and land, sun, moon and stars, and shall not see 
clearly till after nine days at least. That is a pathetic 
inquiry among travellers and geographers after the 
site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think 
it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indis- 
tinct must be the place it occupied ! 

The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me in 
the same way as do those faint revelations of the Real 
which are vouchsafed to men from time to time, or 
rather from eternity to eternity. When I remember 
the history of that faint light in our firmament, which 
we call Venus, which ancient men regarded, and which 
most modern men still regard, as a bright spark at- 
tached to a hollow sphere revolving about our earth, 
but which we have discovered to be ajwther world in 
itself, — how Copernicus, reasoning long and patiently 
about the matter, predicted confidently concerning it, 
before yet the telescope had been invented, that if 
ever men came to see it more clearly than they did 
then, they would discover that it had phases Hke our 
moon, and that within a century after his death the 
telescope was invented, and that prediction verified, 
by Galileo, — I am not without hope that we may, 
even here and now, obtain some accurate information 
concerning that Other World which the instinct of 
mankind has so long predicted. Indeed, all that we 
call science, as well as all that we call poetry, is a par- 
ticle of such information, accurate as far as it goes, 
though it be but to the confines of the truth. If we 
can reason so accurately, and with such wonderful 
confirmation of our reasoning, respecting so-called 
material objects and events infinitely removed beyond 
the range of our natural vision, so that the mind hesi- 



392 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

tates to trust its calculations even when they are con- 
firmed by observation, why may not our speculations 
penetrate as far into the immaterial starry system, of 
which the former is but the outward and visible type? 
Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to 
penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the 
eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material 
universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, 
Shakspeare, Swedenborg, — these are some of our as- 
tronomers. 

There are perturbations in our orbits produced by 
the influence of outlying spheres, and no astronomer 
has ever yet calculated the elements of that undis- 
covered world which produces them. I perceive in 
the common train of my thoughts a natural and un- 
interrupted sequence, each implying the next, or, if 
interruption occurs it is occasioned by a new object 
being presented to my senses. But a steep, and sud- 
den, and by these means unaccountable transition, is 
that from a comparatively narrow and partial, what is 
called common sense view of things, to an infinitely 
expanded and liberating one, from seeing things as 
men describe them, to seeing them as men cannot 
describe them. This implies a sense which is not 
common, but rare in the wisest man's experience ; 
which is sensible or sentient of more than common. 

In what inclosures does the astronomer loiter! His 
skies are shoal ; and imagination, like a thirsty trav- 
eller, pants to be through their desert. The roving 
mind impatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical 
orbits, like cobwebs in a corner of its universe, and 
launches itself to where distance fails to follow, and 
law, such as science has discovered, grows weak 
and weary. The mind knows a distance and a space 



FRIDA V. 393 

of which all those sums combined do not make a unit 
of measure, — the interval between that which appeaj's 
and that which is. I know that there are many stars, 
I know that they are far enough off, bright enough, 
steady enough in their orbits, — but what are they all 
worth? They are more waste land in the West, — 
star territory, — to be made slave States, perchance, 
if we colonize them. I have interest but for six feet 
of star, and that interest is transient. Then farewell 
to all ye bodies, such as I have known ye. 

Every man, if he is wise, will stand on such bottom 
as will sustain him, and if one gravitates downward 
more strongly than another, he will not venture on 
those meads where the latter walks securely, but rather 
leave the cranberries which grow there unraked by 
himself. Perchance, some spring a higher freshet 
will float them within his reach, though they may be 
watery and frost-bitten by that time. Such shrivelled 
berries I have seen in many a poor man's garret, aye, 
in many a church bin and state coffer, and with a 
little water and heat they swell again to their original 
size and fairness, and added sugar enough, stead man- 
kind for sauce to this world's dish. 

What is called common sense is excellent in its 
department, and as invaluable as the virtue of con- 
formity in the army and navy, — for there must be 
subordination, — but uncommon sense, that sense 
which is common only to the wisest, is as much 
more excellent as it is more rare. Some aspire to 
excellence in the subordinate department, and may 
God speed them. What Fuller says of masters of 
colleges is universally applicable, that " a little alloy 
of dulness in a master of a college makes him fitter 
to manage secular affairs." 



394 ^ WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

" He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief 
Because he wants it, hath a true behef ; 
And he that grieves because his grief's so small, 
Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all." 

Or be encouraged by this other poet's strain. 

" By them went Fido marshal of the field : 

Weak was his mother when she gave him day ; 
And he at first a sick and weakly child, 

As e'er with tears welcomed the sunny ray ; 

Yet when more years afford more growth and might, 
A champion stout he was, and puissant knight, 
As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright. 

" Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand ; 

Stops and turns back the sun's impetuous course ; 
Nature breaks Nature's laws at his command ; 
No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force ; 
Events to come yet many ages hence, 
He present makes, by wondrous prescience ; 
Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense." 

" Yesterday, at dawn," says Hafiz, " God delivered me 
from all worldly affliction ; and amidst the gloom of 
night presented me with the water of immortality." 

In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah, occurs this sen- 
tence. " The eagle of the immaterial soul of Shaikh 
Sadi shook from his plumage the dust of his body." 

Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward to 
find some autumnal work to do, and help on the 
revolution of the seasons. Perhaps Nature would 
condescend to make use of us even without our 
knowledge, as when we help to scatter her seeds in 
our walks, and carry burrs and cockles on our clothes 
from field to field. 



I 



FRIDA Y. 395 



All things are current found 
On earthly ground, 
Spirits and elements 
Have their descents. 

Night and day, year on year, 
High and low, far and near, 
These are our wn aspects, 
These are our own regrets. 

Ye gods of the shore. 
Who abide evermore, 
I see your far headland. 
Stretching on either hand ; 

I hear the sweet evening sounds 
From your undecaying grounds ; 
Cheat me no more with time. 
Take me to your clime. 



As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed 
leisurely up the gentle stream, shut in between fra- 
grant and blooming banks, where we had first pitched 
our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our 
lives had passed, we seemed to detect the hues of 
our native sky in the south-west horizon. The sun 
was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so 
rich a sunset as would never have ended but for 
some reason unknown to men, and to be marked with 
brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll of time. 
Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to 
steal over the stream, the whole river valley undulated 
with mild light, purer and more memorable than the 
noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary vales 
uninhabited by man. Two blue-herons, ardea he- 
rodias, with their long and slender limbs relieved 



396 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

against the sky, were seen travelling high over our 
heads, — their lofty and silent flight, as they were 
wending their way at evening, surely not to alight in 
any marsh on the earth's surface, but, perchance, on 
the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol for the 
ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky, or 
sculptured amid the hie roglyjD hies of Egypt. Bound 
to some northern meadow, they held on their stately, 
stationary flight, like the storks in the picture, and 
disappeared at length behind the clouds. Dense 
flocks of blackbirds were winging their way along 
the river's course, as if on a short evening pilgrimage 
to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so fair a 
sunset. 

" Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night 
Hastes darkly to imprison on his way, 
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright 
Of what 's yet left thee of life's wasting day : 
Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy morn, 
And twice it is not given thee to be born." 

The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure and 
in a contemplative mood ; but the farmer's boy 
only whistled the more thoughtfully as he drove his 
cows home from pasture, and the teamster refrained 
from cracking his whip, and guided his teain with a 
subdued voice. The last vestiges of daylight at length 
disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with our 
backs toward home through the darkness, only a 
few stars being visible, we had little to say, but 
sat absorbed in thought, or in silence listened to the 
monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental 
music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics 
of her dimly lighted halls ; 



FRIDA V. 397 

" Pulsse referunt ad sidera valles," 

and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars. 

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, 
we were reminded that it was a rare imagination 
which first taught that the stars are worlds, and 
had conferred a great benefit on mankind. It is 
recorded in the Chronicle of Bernaldez, that in Co- 
lumbus^s first voyage the natives "pointed towards 
the heavens, making signs that they believed that 
there was all power and holiness." We have reason 
to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly 
answer to the ideal in man. The stars are distant 
and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our 
fairest and most memorable experiences^ •■' Let the 
immortal depth of your soul lead you, but earnestly 
extend your eyes upwards." 

As the truest society approaches always nearer to 
solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls 
into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at 
all times, and in all places. She is when we hear 
inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation 
has not displaced her, but is her visible framework 
and foil. All sounds are her servants and purveyors, 
proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a 
rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. They 
are so far akin to Silence, that they are but bubbles 
on her surface, which straightway burst, an evidence 
of the strength and prolificness of the under-current ; 
a faint utterance of silence, and then only agreeable 
to our auditory nerves when they contrast themselves 
with and relieve the former. In proportion as they 
do this, and are heighteners and intensifiers of the 
Silence, they are harmony and purest melody. 



398 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD RIVER. 

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all 
dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every 
chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappoint- 
ment; that background which the painter may not 
daub, be he master or bungler, and which, how- 
ever awkward a figure we may have made in the fore- 
ground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no 
indignity can assail, no personality disturb us. 

The orator puts off his individuality, and is then 
most eloquent when most silent. He listens while 
he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. 
Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din ? She 
is Truth's speaking trumpet, the sole oracle, the 
true Delphi and Dodona, w^hich kings and courtiers 
would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by 
an ambiguous answer. For through Her all reve- 
lations have been made, and just in proportion as 
men have consulted her oracle within, they have 
obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked 
as an enlightened one. But as often as they have 
gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi and her 
mad priestess, their age has been dark and leaden. 
Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer 
yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melo- 
dious era is ever sounding and resounding in the 
ears of men. 

A good book is the plectrum with which our else 
silent lyres are struck. We not unfrequently refer 
the interest which belongs to our own unwritten 
sequel, to the written and comparatively lifeless body 
of the work. Of all books this sequel is the most 
indispensable part. It should be the author's aim 
to say once and emphatically, "He said," " c<^>7/' £• 
This is the most the book maker can attain to. If he 



FRIDA V. 



399 



make his volume a mole whereon the waves of Silence 
may break, it is well. 

It were vain for me to endeavor to interpret the 
Silence. She cannot be done into English. For 
six thousand years men have translated her with what 
fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better 
than a sealed book. A man may run on con- 
fidently for a time, thinking he has her under his 
thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too 
must at last be silent, and men remark only how 
brave a beginning he made; for when he at length 
dives into her, so vast is the disproportion of the told 
to the untold, that the former will seem but the 
bubble on the surface where he disappeared. Never- 
theless, we will go on, like those Chinese cliff swal- 
lows, feathering our nests with the froth which may 
one day be bread of life to such as dwell by the 
seashore. 

We had made about fifty miles this day with sail 
and oar, and now, far in the evening, our boat was 
grating against the bulrushes of its native port, and 
its keel recognized the Concord mud, where some 
semblance of its outline was still preserved in the 
flattened flags which had scarce yet erected them- 
selves since our departure; and we leaped gladly 
on shore, drawing it up, and fastening it to the wild 
apple tree, whose stem still bore the mark which its 
chain had worn in the chafing of the spring freshets. 



ELECTROTYPED BY J. S. GUSHING & CO., NORWOOD, MASS. 



JUL 28 1900 



